Category: blog

As part of my internship, I design my own programs for the summer. One each month, so 3 in all. On June 27th, I had my first event of the summer. As a 4-Her myself, I know a lot of people with different farm animals around the county. So, I decided to ask different people to bring in their animals for the event. There was a steer calf, a miniature horse, two sheep, two rabbits, and a goat.

All animals were well trained so the kids could easily pet them without worrying about getting hurt. The event was even more successful than I ever expected. Around 300 kids and adults alike came to Gazebo Park for the event! That was the most ever for events at the library! Thank you to everyone who provided animals for the event and to the city for letting us use the park!

Hello all! My name is Jenna Scanlan and this summer I am the intern at the library!  First of all a little about me. I just graduated from Caledonia High School in May and next year will be continuing my education at Western Technical College for nursing. This position will really help me, because I want to eventually become a pediatric nurse. So this really helps me know how to care for children. I live on a farm in Brownsville with my two siblings and parents.
Some of my hobbies include reading, showing beef cattle, and spending time with family.

Some activities I have planned for this year are a farm petting zoo, a Disney trivia night, and several book to movie club events, an interactive movie, among other activities I plan on helping out with. I look forward to meeting so many new people during this opportunity.

We had slime night on Wednesday and sadly, it was my last event as an intern at the library. About thirty kids came to the event which was definitely the largest group of kids at any of the events that I attended. We had two different slime recipes for everyone to choose between. One was glue, water, and detergent, and the other recipe was glue, baking soda, and contact solution. When they were done, they could put food coloring, shaving cream, baby oil, essential oils, flour, or sequins into their slime. After their slime was made, the kids decorated their slime cups. There were three contests to enter their finished slime into: the prettiest slime, the grossest slime, and the best sounding slime. A lot of the slimes turned out really well, and I think that the kids had a lot of fun.

On Friday, we held an escape room at the library. This was the first activity that I planned during my internship, and it turned out great. The escape room theme was crazy librarian, so there were cat pictures hung everywhere, and her desk was a mess.

How it worked was we gave the kids one hour to open a locked box with a prize inside. To get the key for the box, they had to use the clues in three smaller locked boxes. And then everyone had to look around the library and her desk for the combinations to the three small boxes. It was hard to judge how hard some things would be for them to figure out, so we gave them three chances to ask for a clue from Ashley and me. When they couldn’t solve the puzzle, they would split up so a few would look around for the next puzzle and a few would keep working on it. Sometimes, the group would bypass the first puzzle and find the next one without the clue that the first one would have provided. They were so close to getting the prize out of the box within the hour. They only went 30 seconds over so we let them have the candy anyway.