Guest Wednesday! - EZ Rock's Jayne Garry! – Or the Story of how I will forever have glitter on my face… IT’S EVERYWHERE!

Jayne Garry (middle) surrounded by all our Mad Scientists, Young Professors, Rhonda (far left) and me! (far right!)

AWESOME fun-filled day today at the good ol’ Beaver Valley Public Library! While outside the heat and sun beat down its whip of fury and sweat, inside the library we all basked in the air-conditioned greatness like lazy cats do around the house on spongy couches!

Today while we had the absolute pleasure of hosting the second meeting of the Young Professors (you can see my previous blog post about that here: http://beavervalleylibrarykids.blogspot.ca/2012/07/week-2-biggest-fastest-first-with-young.html), we were also amazingly able to have our first Guest Wednesday of the Summer! 

The fabulous Jayne Garry of our local radio station EZ Rock, graced us with her loveliness and amazing voice, bringing along her mother and two cute children to join our group for the day! All in all we had 16 kids! Yay!

While lots of kids came in earlier before 1 o’clock, I set up our craft and let the early birds grab the worm! – or in this case the comfy seats and a fun colouring sheet (you can print out your own  Summer Reading Club, Strange … But True? Colouring sheets at the kids SRC website here: http://www.kidssrc.ca/quizzes.htm)

When Jayne arrived, nice and prompt, she also came in with an awesome surprise! She brought some swag and goodies for the kids! Also she carried along a huge poster board showing pictures of the history of the radio station! I introduced Jayne to the kids and they all behaved lovely and sat very well in their seats! 

Jayne told a whole bunch of awesome stories, the kids learnt about the radio station, about Jayne’s career and where its taken her, and I think her talk also inspired the kids into thinking about their own future careers. Jayne told stories of how when she was a child, she and her younger sister would pretend play that they were radio announcers and make up their own stories to tell. She also shared some stories of interesting people she’s had to interview in the past, such as, Rick Hanson and even a brief encounter with Jerome Iginla! One story the kids loved that Jayne told us was about how one special occasion for her job she had to go to Disneyland (it might’ve been world… but I’m going out on a limb and saying land!) The kids loved it! Some of them even said excitedly “so, you got paid to go to Disneyland!??!” 

She also shared a strange fact, which I loved! It tied in perfectly with our theme: Strange … But True? Now, apart of the atmosphere, the ionosphere has a strange characteristic in that AM radio waves bounce off it and travel back to the earth. So countries far away can pick up signals from countries even further away!

After her presentation, we gave out applause and Jayne bestowed her gifts to each Mad Scientist and Young Professor in attendance!

We then set to our crafts!

 Now let me first start off by telling you a backstory! So after the Young Professors club in the morning I reset the Children’s Section of the library and added craft tables, covered in newspaper! And chairs arranged in audience formation towards the bulletin board where Jayne would present.

So the craft today was to tie in the idea of communication – since Jayne spoke about the news and radio and how influential it is in people’s lives. We decided, then, that we would do the classic tin cans on string telephones – substituting the tin cans for plastic cups (it still works, just not as well!) since we didn’t want anyone cutting themselves on a rough edge. Anyways, for my example I foolishly decided to paint the inside and add glitter to the paint, for me it was simple, easy and didn’t take too long to dry.

But when I showed the kids my example today, I didn’t realize that they would all decide to do glitter as well! Rhonda, wisely saw the disaster while I was setting up, saying something like “oh, my girls are going to go crazy over that glitter”. If only I had listened!!!

Hahahaha, long story short (too late) the library is now covered in glitter! Myself, included! I didn’t realize until Jayne pointed it out to me but glitter infected my face like a bad case of acne and I came to work (at the theatre) and my boss, Lisa, and customers even! have been doing that thing where instead of looking you in the eye, you can feel their eyes wandering over your face, questioning “what the---?”. Oh well!

But really even with the massive tornado of sparkles that looks to have past through the library, this Guest Wednesday (my first Guest Wednesday) was awesome! I enjoyed listening to Jayne’s presentation! I loved how her little daughter perpetually danced around her, and how her son quizzed me on mathematics that no average grade 3 student would know!

I hope the kids had fun! They all glitzed up their telephones with glitter, feathers, pompoms and gobs and gobs of liquid glue, that may take a century to dry! They even naturally gravitated towards the height chart and measured themselves on the wall! Still no one has beat Robert Wadlow!

So that was our first Guest Wednesday! I would like to reiterate my extreme gratitude to Jayne Garry and EZ Rock Radio for being so easy to get into contact and so supporting to our library! We had such a great time!

Here are some more pictures from our day! Enjoy! Happy Reading!