TPiB: Leaving Kansas for OZ- Oz the Great and Powerful
So, my teens and I are so over anxiously awaiting the release of Oz The Great and Powerful so badly you cannot believe it. In fact, one of them has his birthday that day, and my teens start their spring break on the 7th, and they are begging me to go to the midnight showing. Or the 9 p.m. as the case may be.
At any rate, if your teens are like mine, you *need* to do programming for the new movie. Click through the break for awesome things to do with your teens and to tie in with the movie and the books!
COSTUMES
Invite your teens to dress up in their favorite characters from the books or the movies. There’s not just the new release and the Judy Garland movie either. There’s The Wiz, The Muppet’s Wizard of Oz, and Return to Oz as well, not to mention SciFi Channel’s Tin Man. If you can, give out prizes for the best costume, most original, best steampunk interpretation- the categories are only limited by your imagination. They don’t have to be big prizes, either- most of the time, teens could benefit from passes that would give them extra time on the computer, or an extra week of time on a book loan, or $5 off their fines.
SORT YOUR TEENS
While the original Wizard of Oz that everyone is familiar with shows the citizens of the Emerald City, the Land of Oz is actually split into four separate sections, one for each of the witches to rule over. Start out your program by separating out your teens into North (Gillikins- Locasta) , South (Quadlings- Glinda), East (Munchkins- Evanora), and West (Winkies- Theodora) for their respective lands. If you have stations for crafts and activities, these can be used to rotate teens around the room.
CRAFTS
Thinking about crafts for your teens and looking for inspiration?
What about creating hot air balloons and letting loose your own wizard to Oz? Bkids has an awesome idea for hot air balloons using helium balloons, food product netting, and small baskets…. And if you can’t get helium use water bottles, baking soda and vinegar.
Or, create your own flying monkeys! Take a standard, like these from Oriental Trading Company, and let the teens decorate with markers, and add in construction paper wings for your own flying monkey army!
If your teens are into jewlery, check out Spoonful’s Shrink Oz charms! If you don’t have the means to create shrink charms at work it would mean taking your work home with you, or morphing it around to mod podging pictures onto bottle caps or other media, but I love the effect! Or, if you don’t want to let your teens loose with mod podge, search around craft stores for iconic beads and charms that would fit the theme and let them create away.
You can make personalized snowglobes easily with pictures, empty jars and glycerin. Instead of calling them snow globes though, call them tornado globes. Complete instructions here.
Modify crafts you already know and love to fit the theme: You can do Oz themed marble magnets, bottle cap crafts, or felties. Teens can use images from the movie or use words like heart, brain, courage. In fact, you can ask teens: If they were going to see the Wizard, what would you ask him for?
You can set up a scavenger hunt throughout the library and have teens search for a heart, brain, courage, ruby red slippers and more.
SHE BLINDED ME WITH SCIENCE
Since it is a tornado that starts our story, you can have a science moment at your program with the classic tornado in a bottle experiment. Complete instructions are here.
TAKE HOMES
For take homes, think about printables, like these bookmarks from Spoonful. Or let your teens loose with pictures from magazines or royalty free images from the internet, and have them create and laminate (with clear booktape) their own bookmarks to create their own take home crafts.
Or let teens create hot air balloon collages. Take outlines of hot air balloons print them out on either plain white paper or card stock (depending on what your photocopier/printer will handle) and let the teens loose with your leftover magazines. They can go in strips horizontal, vertical or any which way, or take pictures from the free images from the books and movies and create collages of different characters within.
What ideas do you have for the Oz premier? Share in the comments!
Filed under: Collages, Costumes, Crafts, Jewelry, Oz the Great and Powerful, Shrink Charms, TPIB, Uncategorized
About Karen Jensen, MLS
Karen Jensen has been a Teen Services Librarian for almost 30 years. She created TLT in 2011 and is the co-editor of The Whole Library Handbook: Teen Services with Heather Booth (ALA Editions, 2014).
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