Cindy Crushes Programming: Teen Playground

I had the idea of creating a teen playground in the library after years of seeing teens who often just wanted to roll on the floor. Why not let them use the library as a playground? So for an hour and a half after library hours one day, we made it happen. I did this program after hours so as not to disturb library patrons and to give this the real playground feeling. 

Scavenger Hunt

I  hid stickers in the children’s department, and the first teen to come back with ten stickers won a prize. This was very completive. I was clear with  the rules of no running, pushing or stealing stickers.

Floor is Lava in the children’s programming room

We played the classic game the Floor is Lava in the children’s programming department. I added an extra obstacle by shooting at them with a NERF bow and arrow. If they were hit, they were out of the game. The teens loved this and wanted to play a lot. 

Parachute games In our Big Program Room

We played the following games

‘Parachute Tag: Lift the parachute high into the air. Call out two children’s names. They must trade seats by running under the ‘chute, before it comes down on them.

Popcorn: Place a number of beanbags, small balls, or cottonballs onto the parachute. Shake to make them pop up like “popcorn”.

Shark Attack: Everyone sits with legs stretched out underneath the chute, which is held chest-high. One or two children are the “sharks” and crawl around under the parachute and try to grab people’s legs to pull them under the chute. The “captured” is now the “shark” “

I took the descriptions and inspiration from https://www.weareteachers.com/parachute-games/

Parachute was the most popular and we played it twice. Make sure to get a good size parachute. The teens are big kids. 

Charades

We used the rules for charades that I found under this link, but I printed out words ahead of time since I knew handwriting would be an issue if I did not. At first they did not want to play, then got very competitive and it was so fun. https://play-charades.com/how-to-play

Zombie Tag

We picked a few zombies and had the shamble around. The last one to “survive” is the winner.

Final thoughts: This program was awesome! The kids had a blast. We had so much fun that we did not get to do everything we had planned. The kids are so excited about everything. I had no idea this program would be so much fun! Letting teens just play in the library and have fun is what it is about. This program brought me so much joy seeing the kids have fun. 

Filed under: Cindy Crushes Programming, Programming, Teen Programming