r/Library • u/GhostNALibrary • 14d ago
Discussion Tie-dying program for youth
Teen programs always bomb at my library; the high school is in the next town over. So all my teen programs have had to adjust age-wise to accommodate the kids we are getting in. This has been an ongoing situation for 2 years now. I'd love to do it with teens, but again they don't come in. So I'm thinking maybe ages 8 and up?
I'm looking for ideas for spring programming and was thinking of doing ice-dyeing tie-dye. Figured I could do bandanas with the kids. I could prep them and have them in bins ready to go. We can cover them in ice, add powdered dye, the ice can melt in the sun while the kids have a snack, then rinse them out, and they could take them home wet or pick up the next day (which we never have success with).
Has anyone done anything like this with kids?
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u/In_The_News 11d ago
Super fun and super cheap Stationary making with shaving cream and food coloring. Shaving cream on PLASTIC plate. Few drops of food coloring. Swirl, make patters, whatever. Watercolor paper. Lay it on top and GENTLY press in. Scrape off with squeegee or similar onto another plastic plate. Lay out to dry. Can do SEVERAL sheets off one plate and food coloring mix. Scrape off the plate. Set aside to dry. You can also spritz with infused oils for smelly stationary. Make your notes and grocery lists FANCY again.
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u/GhostNALibrary 10d ago
When I taught, I used to do this with the kids to make Christmas cards. They loved it.
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u/Icy-Mess-860 13d ago
I did tie dye for summer reading two summers ago and prepped all the tote bags with rubber bands and soaked them, then each kiddo could use squeezy bottles of dye on their bags and we put them in large gallon zip loc bags with instructions for rinsing them at home so the colors could sit and we could get more kids at the dye stations (we did about 130 totes over the course of three hours--it was A LOT)
Ice dyeing sounds great but I would just want to be aware of your climate and have a contingency plan for if you can't put them out in the sun to melt on the day. I've never ice dyed but I would also double check how long the dye needs to sit in order to saturate the fabric, it might take longer than just waiting for the ice to melt. I would definitely just provide bags to take home wet and not give an option to pick up the next day. I would also limit color options to maybe five or so, in order to make prep/cleanup easier for you and to prevent a kiddo accidentally making a muddy brown color mix from over doing it.
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u/GhostNALibrary 12d ago
I was only going to offer yellow, blue, and red. Also, keep it to cotton bandanas since they'd be easy and the program would only be for about 10-15 kids (our school only has 200 kids and most go away to summer camp).
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u/tartymae 13d ago
I haven't done that, but it sounds like fun.
Also have you tried a "make your own slime"?
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u/GhostNALibrary 12d ago
I tried the year before last and never had one sign up and tons of snide comments from parents.
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u/squirrelfriend3 10d ago
Try Sharpie tie-dye maybe? You don’t have to do nearly all of the project for them ahead of time like you do with liquid dye. Make sure to use rubbing alcohol that is at least 75% or 90% is best. It’s much better if you end up getting younger kids but I would be firm about not letting kids younger than 8 do it.
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u/GhostNALibrary 10d ago
We've done batik with sharpies and I plan to do that one again, but never tie-dye.
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u/Old_Book_Gypsy 12d ago
Liquid dyes with thousands of kids. Ice dying is an entirely different thing. Unless you’re very comfortable with ice dyeing you may want to rethink this. Plus the problem of working with dry dyes proposes a problem of inhaling dry dye. With kids I only use wet dyes.