Holiday Book Event and Barnes & Noble

Once again the good people at Barnes & Noble at Oakland's Jack London Square are generously hosting us for a holiday book-buying extravaganza!

I invite all FFL students who have come to two or more programs over the past calendar year. We meet in the children's book section, where I read aloud several of the books on display. Promptly at the appointed hour I give everyone a shopping budget from a purchase order. Then everyone shops!

Barnes & Noble provides us a 20% discount, goodies from their cafe, a staff person to answer questions and help our families find books, a book truck to stack purchases while people are shopping, and a dedicated register for our families.

Over time, I've developed several rules. (1) No latecomers: Once I've done the math to divide up the purchase order among those present, there is no money left, and that's that. (2) No outsiders: although anyone is welcome to bring friends, family members, etc. to regular programs, this is just for students and the children I give them books for. (3) Math lesson: people are expected to keep track of their own purchases, although I'll help them before they check out to make sure that they are within their budget. (4) Watch your own children!

Sadly, Barnes & Noble is closing its Oakland store at the end of this year. But if you have a store near you, you might consider asking them to host an event like this. I'm thinking of trying Borders next year.

Barack Obama bookmark

I've created a new bookmark with a great quote I found of President Obama's. I'm distributing this to our families; and our branch library liked it so much I put them on the copyright and am giving them the template and copies to hand out, in thanks for the help they've given me over the years.

Feel free to download this and use it!

Scrapbooking family night

We had a fun family night learning how to create scrapbook pages from favorite photos. And best of all - this program was led by one of our own learners who scrapbooks as a hobby!

We told families in advance (by flyer and in our phone calls) to bring their own photos - we also had some photos of them from previous family nights, just in case they forgot. I met several times with the learner/program leader to guide her in how to lead a class and to plan the program, decide on materials and review what we had on hand, and shop at our local Creative Reuse store for what we lacked. (I also did a small amount of shopping at Michael's at her direction.) Our learner led a great program, telling our families not only how to make fun and beautiful scrapbook pages with their kids but also how to use the craft and the photos as a springboard for family storytelling time. Each family got to take home a tote bag with scrapbooking materials and a little photo album.