Because Bowties Are Cool: Doctor Who @ Your Library

Source: http://bit.ly/10JxrrL 

Over the summer, my coworker came up with the brilliant idea of doing a Doctor Who Party for teens. Since I am a huge Doctor Who fan myself, I was eager to jump in and help out. We had 60 very enthusiastic teens attend! For those of you that are unfamiliar with Doctor Who, it's a TV show about a time lord named The Doctor who travels with his (mostly) female companions throughout time and space. Here's a guy who can explain it much better than me:

Also check out this Doctor Who wiki for more detailed info on the Doctors, companions, and other Whovian things.

With the 50th anniversary special airing at the end of November and the fandom ever-growing amongst teens, Doctor Who parties have been slowly gaining in popularity in libraries. I see postings for ideas more than ever in the listervs and on Facebook. So here's what we did at our Doctor Who event:

1. Sonic Screwdriver Pens: We got the idea from the blog Doodle Craft. Click the link for the full instructions. We used Fimo clay which we bought from our local craft store. It comes in all sorts of Doctor Who-vian types of colors like silver and metallic blue. The clay-wrapped pens do have to be baked, so make sure you have access to an oven or toaster oven. This was the first activity the teens did when they came in because it took the longest to complete. While the pens baked, we moved on to our next activity.

Some of our teen's creations

Some more of their creations

2. Doctor Who Trivia: My coworker told me about a new way to do trivia with teens and I may never go back to the old way of doing it! Basically, you divide the teens up into equal teams. Then you put out 1 less chair than number of teams, each with a point value attached (10 points up to 50 points). So if you have 6 teams, you would put out 5 chairs. Then you give each team a Ziploc baggie with the trivia answers on strips of paper. You would then ask a question and 1 person from each team would find the correct answer in the pile and run with it to one of the chairs. Obviously, they are all going to go for the 50 point chair and one team won't make it to a seat in time so their points for that round will be 0. Then you have everyone go back to their places behind a line and rearrange the chairs. This trivia method is super loud, chaotic, and fun! We used a whiteboard to tally up all of the points. The winning team won vinyl TARDIS clings we bought on Amazon. I would be happy to send anyone our trivia questions/answers.

3. Cubee Craft: We set out a bunch of cubees printed on cardstock and scissors and let the teens go to town while we showed clips from Doctor Who. You can find some great ones here.

Source: http://bit.ly/cGneCB

4. The TARDIS: I am lucky enough to be married to someone just as geeky as I am. Long story short, my husband, our friends, and I went to a convention where we dressed up like Doctor Who. Of course, we needed a full-size TARDIS to go with it so my husband and his friend built one in my basement where it resides today. They were nice enough to not only bring it to our program, but to dress up like 2 of the doctors as well!

My friend and husband as 10 & 11 (center), the 4th Doctor (left), and a totally awesome teen Weeping Angel (right)

5. Snack: One activity we wanted to do but ran out of time was have the teens make TARDIS cakes. We would give them rectangles of plain white cake and blue decorations (icing, M&M's, sprinkles, etc.) and let them get creative.

For some more ideas, also visit the ever-awesome Teen Librarian's Toolbox.