Yes, and what do they want? Snacks. Feed a teen and their yours for the taking. They'll eat anything and that's your pass to pick their brains. Two weeks ago I surprised our teens with pizza at a our Wii gaming program and decided to quiz them on what they wanted to do. Between bites of pizza and gulps of soda they said:
Build-Your-Own Snack Bar
Not little kid crafts
"Easy" I thought and easy it was. Nachos brought in 19 teens to a cupcake scrapbooking craft - half boys, half girls. All were fed and happy to cut out delicate pink and purple paper cupcakes. It was easy and cheap:
big can of cheese sauce
huge bag of tortilla chips
big can of chili
big can of jalapenos
On the more serious side, some of our kids come to us direnctly from school already starving. They eat lunch at 12:30pm and by 3:30pm when they start to roll into the library they are already looking for their next meal and many of these kids don't get picked up until well into the evening. Bottomline: they're hungry and I need them to notice what the library has to offer so why not provide bookclubs, movie screenings, gaming and crafts with snacks.
Next week, gaming and build-your-own trail mix!
