Enter The Arena!

For more information and a different perspective on this program, check out my friend and fellow blogger Jessica Haight's blog.

Dawn and Jess

For those keeping score, I am in grad school to be a librarian - specifically a YA Librarian! For 2 of my classes, I have needed to create a program for teens. Last semester I decided to create one based upon The Hunger Games and timed to be presented just after the release of the movie.

Once created, I turned to my friend and mentor (and head of Children's and Teen Services at my local library) Geri. I sent her the program to see what she thought of it and she asked if I would do it at our library. So much goes into creating and implementing a program for grades 6-12!!! I wanted it to be engaging, interesting and fun. From there we designed the posters:

Geri enlisted her Teen Advisory Group (TAG) to come in costume and help out. They were fantastic!

Here are the training stations:

Katniss' Archery:

Lesson learned: Those little arrows can really FLY! We had to make sure we had an adult there (or a TAG member) in order to keep the arrows pointed at the target on the door, not at other people!

Peeta's Cookie/Graham Cracker Decorating:

Lesson learned: Vanilla Wafers and Graham Crackers are JUST as much fun (if not more) to decorate as large cookies! Plus, you can make a bunch and not feel as though you are wasting stuff. Note to self, pink icing turns your tongue pink...but pink tongue looks AWESOME with blue hair! Oh, and the graham cracker above shows this tribute's vision of The Girl On Fire dress!! Isn't it awesome?????

Camouflage Face Painting:

Lesson learned: Sometimes you have to put camouflage face paint into the microwave in order to get it to spread. This was the real deal so I am not sure how the military gets this stuff to work! Oh, and a pie server makes an awesome trowel...

And Haymitch's Knot Tying: 

(photo to be added as soon as I get them from the library! Sorry!!)

Lesson learned: Trust that amazing TAG members will make your event awesome! One of the members happens to be an Eagle Scout. We asked him to play Haymitch and teach knot tying...he took it from there! He stayed in character for the ENTIRE event (even I couldn't swing that). He was fantastic!

We played a Cornucopia Challenge game and Hunger Games Trivia.
Lesson learned: ALWAYS have extra "stuff" to do in case you run short!!! Thanks to Geri who reminded me that because the trivia was on the Jeopardy Labs website, I could look up other Hunger Games Jeopardy boards and play longer.

Members of the Teen Advisory Group came dressed as members of the Capitol and were a HUGE help and a HUGE hit! They were awesome, staying in character and helping everything go smoothly.

A good time was had by ALL!