I am interested in tips on how to organize and facilitate a book club that I can use in a presentation I will be giving this fall. Please share with me your experiences.
Thanks!
Edie Asbury
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Be sure to check out LeVelle Calbat and Janice Baker summer activities in The Circle.
Fay Hudnall, Blue Valley Baptist Church in Olathe, KS, sent me the following to post about their book club this year.
The library at the Ridgeview campus was restored in April. We immediately began planning our summer book club, and we are having our best book club participation ever! In the first three weeks we have checked out and in over 2,000 items! It is so rewarding to see our library filled with children and their parents! Our theme this year is “Bee A Reader!”
We provide two books each week for the preschool Sunday School classes that complement the lesson they are studying. Also, our childcare workers teach Bible lessons for preschool children for events such as choir practice. They requested two books for each of their classes as well. Our library has two different story times for Bible stories each Sunday for preschoolers, too. We love having the preschool children in the library! As the preschoolers promote to the children’s and youth departments, many of them keep coming back to the library!
However, one promotion we started two years ago has really increased traffic flow and books checked out in our library. We call this promotion our “Treasure Chest Books!”. We have three baskets filled with beginning readers. Zondervan has published many Bible stories in “I Can Read” books. Also, they have Christian fiction books for preschoolers. If children check out any of these books, they bring them to a library worker to return them. For each book read, the child can select a piece of candy or an inexpensive toy from our treasure chest. Parents love this promotion as much as the kids. The parents like having their beginning readers read these books. Often you might hear parents remind their children to be sure to check out a treasure chest book! The older kids asked for books they could read to get treasure chest items. They can read missionary or Christian hero biographies or watch DVDs about the same subjects. Bible stories, children’s Christian fiction, missionary and Christian hero biographies ARE treasures worth celebrating!
Our library has four sessions of story time each summer for parents and preschoolers. Older siblings often come, too, and listen to the stories. The story time coordinates with our book club, giving kids another opportunity to check out books and DVDs. We focus on reading Bible stories. One of my favorite sources for stories is Read-Aloud Bible Stories by Ella Lindvall. We have stories, songs, an activity, snacks, and a little toy. This year we are giving different colors of rubber ducks reading a book.
Since our theme this year is “Bee A Reader!” story times were planned around t following units:
Last week, we had 66 participants. I think several more are planning to attend tomorrow! I am off to church making “bee” mix—Honeycomb cereal, honey Teddy Graham’s (the spring mix has bees, butterflies, leaves, etc.), marshmallows, and M&Ms.