I can almost think about the quietness

8 boys are playing basketball.

7 girls are playing house.

There are random hoots and hollering of playing. I'm sure in a week, when it is quiet in here, I will hate it. I love the good noises of this place. I don't have to look up when I just hear basketball growls and girl's jibber jabber. Unless there are higher pitch screams or crashing, I can sit here in my own little world and attempt to get work done.

I have to begin thinking about the clean up of this room. I have set aside the day after labor day to do it. Kids will be in school, I won't be open to the public. I am going to get hopped up on Red Bull and see how much I can get accomplished.

I also have to think about some sort of "door/wall decoration". Over a year ago, our teen center was renovated. In that renovation my door was moved from the corner to the almost middle of the back wall of the library. Now, I have this wall space to work with, to kinda say: "hey! look! it's a toy library!" And then no one can ever walk into this building again without knowing it's here. This was presented to me last week. I was told as long as it could be done cheaply, we could do some painting of some sort. Something like this would be my dream.

Maybe a little more toys involved. I like the city idea.

 I will work with what I have. This is what My current brochure and sign look like:

I love it, the person who designed it has retired :-(. I am thinking something along these lines. Maybe a little less generic clip art. I am officially on the hunt for cool toy pictures and a way to semi-permanently hang them on the wall. And then maybe bright paint + block letters spelling out Toy Resource Center?

I'm sure there are more things on my agenda that I am supposed to think about as school goes into session. Like the quietness....

Violence AND/ IN Play

I found the first article below during the daily blog reading and as per usual it got me thinking. So then I did a little research and found the other two.

Should We Let Our Kids Play With Toy Guns?

I don't allow them to see TV or video games that represent any violence at all, let alone gun play. Still, I can't give my older child a banana for his snack without him pretending it's a gun. Is it a boy thing? It seems to be in his DNA.

In conversation's I've had this has happened often. Many mom's are screwed if they do, screwed if they don't. If their child doesn't own a gun toy, it wants one and may not be happy until it has one. And then they go and make their own guns (hence the banana). I do believe it is a boy thing. I also believe that "gun play" is a stage. I have no problem with toy guns as long as they are not pointed directly at people. I recently bought my godson a Nerf gun. It surprised me how much I didn't have a problem with it, it shoots out green balls, not bullets. The most important part to me: it doesn't look like a real gun.


War Play, Gun Play, Superhero and Violent Play...Why Won't It Go Away?
"Why do preschoolers play this way sometimes? Three-, 4- and 5-year-olds typically are not in control of their own lives. Adults make most of the decisions, and older siblings and playmates make up most of the rules. Teachers and child-care providers work with larger groups of children and must have some control over planned activities and schedules. Preschoolers may feel a bit lost in this world of older decision makers."


Last week I was listening to kids talk as they played. One girl was telling the other girl what to do in their play. It got me thinking, how many rules are there in the kids games? Does everyone know the rules? And why is there always that one bossy person in a "game"? I sometimes like to settle down the bossy person if they are going to the extreme. Like when they tell someone else "you have to play it this way" I can't disrupt the nature of the alpha-dog process and I know it.


The Truth Behind Violent Play
"Children who excluded a child tended to call him or her a name (girl or baby or tattletale) and then they seemed to feel justified in being physically or verbally hurtful to that child. On the other hand, a child who is frequently ostracized can justify violence as a means of retaliation."


I see this kind of "violence" more often than not. The key word in the article above is "justified" My least favorite story to tell happened a couple weeks ago. A little girl was accidentally pushed by another boy. Instead of the little boy just saying sorry and the situation being over... the boy's older brother + friend took him out of the room and began hitting him for "hurting" a girl. The older boys believed they were justified in their punishment. 


It is hard to tell stories about this room without mentioning a violent act once in a while (weird huh?). Sometimes it's a older sister dragging her younger sister out of here by the arm. Sometimes it's 2 boys fighting and/or play fighting. Sometimes it's verbal: name calling, degrading, general yelling. The occasions of pretend gun play are rarer. There might be a game of cops and robbers once in a while, but since it typically includes play fighting and yelling it's squashed within moments. 


This is my question. What if violent play has nothing to do with guns, soldiers and war? What if the play and games just turns violent?

I found my patience while playing with Marble Runs

July is over, meaning we're officially half through the busyness of summer.

July = 619 children, 195 came in without adults. Some days there were 20 kids in here at once. Other days it was more like 10, but they all seemed relatively the same amount of work and stress.

I had a conversation today. It was the endless conversation that we have daily, weekly, monthly. We may have new insights once in a while, but there are never solutions. What do we do with children who misbehave. This is the conversation: "If we kick them out forever, then we lose them forever... They are too young for us to lose them... We have to be their parents in here..." It is something that I have battled with for a long time while working here. Is that fair to us? No. But are we working for the greater good of children, literacy  and the surrounding community? I believe the answer is yes and that is why I have worked here for over four years, went to school to become a librarian and will love to continue working in this field.

The conversation happened after my break, and right afterwards the children came back in after their snack. We all had a break from one another. But they came in annoyed with each other, Robert was doing this, or Jeremiah was doing that and Heaven just wasn't helping matters.... So Jeremiah came up to my desk as I was counting the pieces to a bingo game (with the cage that spins and holds the number balls) He was spinning it around and telling me how it worked. I figured if he was interested in that, maybe he would like the marble runs, he would like to see how it worked. So I sat him down and we played with it, and then the other kids surrounded us and they all wanted to play with it. But Jeremiah needed some time alone so we shooed them away. And for about 10 minutes we had this perfect toy time. And I realized how simple it is to find the patience to handle this job... Sometimes I get so busy doing my job (counting returns, cleaning up, paperwork, putting toys sets back together) that I forget to take the time to do my job.