Thinking Beyond the Stacks: Creating a Summer Camp for Tweens!

After attending the 2022 ALSC Conference session “Black Kids Camp Too; Don’t They?”, the Kansas City Public Library’s Southeast Branch Children's Librarian started reflecting on her own childhood spent outdoors camping, swimming, biking, and hiking nature trails—and just having a great “wildness” experience. She wanted to bring those same kinds of experiences to the youth in her branch’s neighborhood, and this led her to create the library’s first Tween Camp. The camp facilitated not only adventures into nature for neighborhood youth ages 8-11, but also introduced them to the branch’s Digital Media Lab (KCDML). KCDML is a hands-on learning environment that uses storytelling, robotics, digital media, and other maker activities to engage youth ages 12-18.

This 3-week STEAM camp, the first of its kind in the KCPL system, was designed to eliminate barriers to participation for youth and their families, including personal cost and the need to have their children engaged for the full day while parents worked. The Camp moved from inspiration to execution in nine months. In this program, the Camp creators will share their experiences in developing the camp, from planning, resourcing, and reaching the target audience and documentation of the process. They will share information about the fundamental principles with which they approach their work with teens and how they adapted that work to create a bridge to serve the younger demographic. Support materials that will enable participants to develop their own plans will be provided.

Learning Objectives:

1. Creating your own summer camp experience utilizing resources in your community
2. Sparking a new interest in maker and nature activities.
3. Applying Connected Learning principles to your summer programs.
4. Adapting teen programming to serve tweens

Anonymous feedback from the 2024 ALSC National Institute session of this presentation:

• "This was the most inspiring, gear turning session I’ve attended."
• "My favorite program so far! Practical tips as well as centering goals and meeting the needs of kids/community. Exiting to think about the possibilities and ways to adapt to my local system."