On Wednesday, I had one of the easiest programs I presented this summer. It was by no means an original idea. I got it at a meeting in which a bunch of teen librarians got together to share ideas of what to do as part of the summer reading program to tie in with the theme of "Metamorphosis @ your library."

One aspect of metamorphosis ties in with recycling, which is why were are celebrating ecology this week. The program was a free art program. The hardest part was collecting up a bunch of soda cans for the basis of the program.

Each of the participants got two cans. They took each can to the floor, where they used a mallet to crush it however they wanted to. They then took the can back to one of the tables to paint it however they wanted to. It was so interesting to see what the teens came up with.

There were a couple of interesting trends that I noticed. For example, while all the boys crushed the cans by banging them down at the top, the girls tended to turn them on their side to crush them.

With colors, the boys all used the strong dark and primary colors on the cans while the girls mixed colors to create softer and lighter colors such as pastels. All the cans came out really awesome. I wished I had thought to reserve our display case for the month of August so we could put the cans in to display them for everyone to see.

It was an easy program, but the kids really loved it and it worked out grea.