Summer Bookmarks

This being my very first personal journey into the children's side of the summer library program I am eager to make an impression, while not biting off more than I can chew. And nerves have definitely set in on more than one occasion.

My new library did not do a "reading" portion for their summer program last year which has left me many times with conflicted feelings. Should I feel cursed that I have to recreate the wheel having nothing to build off of from last summer? Or have I been given a wonderful opportunity to do whatever I want because I have nothing to compare it to?

I'm going with option 2.

So this summer we are going to start right off with where I was hoping to end up down the line. We are drastically decreasing the amount of prizes that we hand out to kids throughout the summer.

We are going to be instead following in the footsteps of many other libraries and finding more creative ways to incentivize them without forcing junk upon their households.

Enter our summer bookmarks.

These are super-simple and have instructions on the back. They get their bookmarks stamped to "validate" them and then these become their entries into the grand prize pools. And to keep them coming back each bookmark is traded in for a sticker to add to our sports display. Which will look a bit like these:

We will have various sporting figures (not all basketball of course) that will be life-size. We will put the silhouette figures on the wall and try to see if we can cover them with stickers over the summer. I promise I will post them when we get them up.

Kids can submit a maximum of four reading bookmarks over the summer and can do one additional activity bookmark for attending library programs.

Here's hoping this goes over as smoothly as I hope.