High School Literary Character Brawl pt. 2!

As promised in the first High School Literary Character Brawl post, I'm going to talk about the other challenges that we did throughout the night. But before I do, let me tell you a little bit more about how we set up the event.

When everyone walked in, we gave each of them a Brawl Card, and a Character Card. Their Character Card held their life points and defense points (each type of point was a paper clip), and the Brawl Cards were used to determine who would challenge who. Basically, the Brawlmaster (Yours Truly) would randomly shuffle the Brawl Cards, and lay them out in pairs. The pairs would then battle each other in the Brawl Round, or in the challenges in-between.

Each of our Brawl rounds had a slightly different stage. The first round, we gave the characters range of the whole room. Second round they were limited to half of the room, and the third round they were limited to a rectangle of tables that resembled a fencing match. After all of our participants had faced off in the appropriate round, we would move to our secondary challenges.

After our first Brawl round, we played some dodge ball. Brawl Cards were randomly assigned side 1 or side 2, and the side with the last players standing got coin. Those who got hit had to give up a life point. Secondly we tried a Book Cart Drag Race (some things are better shown than talked about). The losers in their heat had to give up a life point as well.

We then did a second round of Brawls with only half of the room available, and then moved onto Ninja (the link brings you to rules and an explanation). The short explanation of this game is taking turns trying to hit another player's hands. If you do, your opponent is out. After that, I had found some riddles (simply typed "riddles" into Google) that were ridiculous and fun. If you answered correctly, you got one coin.

Once our riddles were complete, the only thing left was Brawling in a rectangle of tables, and then counting up our spoils. The event was an absolute ton of fun as I said earlier, but there are always things that one learns while doing programs. So next installment, I'm going to give some participant suggestions that would make the event even more awesome!

P.S. As our next 2 weeks are filled with Holidays (YAY!) my next installment will be the week of January 7th. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

High School Literary Character Brawl!

So, ya, this program was a ton of fun!

While we've been discussing programs at Next-Gen Advisory Team (NGAT), we thought it would be a ton of fun to dress up as literary characters and then have some sort of contest. Originally, we were thinking of playing Mafia (or Murderer or Body/Body or some variation of the bunch) around the library, but with emergency lights, I didn't think it would be dark enough to be ridiculously awesome.

Then I started thinking about Live Action Role Play (LARP) and Cosplay. I figured that basic idea would give a purpose to dressing up, and would let us have a contest. So after discussing my brainstorming ideas with members of NGAT, I set about building a framework for our High School Literary Character Brawl!

The basic idea for the night would be 1-minute rounds where two participants would battle with pool noodles. After each brawl, the audience (the participants waiting their turn to fight) would decide who won and who had lost. The loser had to give 10 of their coin (we used LEGO pieces) to the winner. After all of our brawl rounds and challenges, the person with the most coins would win!

We gave each participant 30 coin at the beginning of the night. They also received 10 health points (they lost 1 point after each brawl lost, and in a couple of our other challenges), and 5 defense points (each 1 defense point meant 2 less coins you had to give your victorious opponent). If our participants had either or those left at the end, a health point was worth 5 coins, and the defense points were worth 1 coin. 

While this program was ultimately pretty simple, there were a few different pieces to it. So, I'm going to be talking about it for the next few weeks on the blog. Check back next week for the other challenges we did in-between the brawl rounds =D

Library: After Hours

As we approach our 2012 Teen Film Festival, myself and the Next-Gen Advisory Team here at the Hayden Library, couldn't help but make a video :)

Anybody Need Program Ideas?

So, every Monday from 4-5pm, we do a program for 3-6 graders. The first Monday we have Play With Your Food, where we bake and cook. The second Monday we do Ka-Boom, where we have fun doing science experiments. On third Mondays we have Couldn't Put It Down, which is a gaming and technology time. Finally, we have Express Yourself on fourth Mondays which is us making crafts.

In addition, we just started a program for Middle Schoolers, 6-8 graders, called Tuesday Works, and we're going to be doing something fun and different each month.

Oh, I almost forgot about our High School programs. We have a Next-Gen Advisory Team that meets to brainstorm cool things for Teens to do at the library, and we also just started a book club called TeenBookWorms.

As I thought about these programs, I thought that someone, somewhere, might be interested in what we did, and how we did it. So, when I get the chance, I'm going to do a quick blog post with resources and a quick breakdown on what we did, how we did it, and how it went. Hope you like the idea =D