For Teen Read Month last fall, the South Jordan Library hosted an after hours minigolf event for middle and high schoolers.
The teens who came got into teams of 2-5 people and each team created a hole using library items, such as book ends, discarded magazines; and household and recycled items, such as paper plates, cardboard tubes, duct tape, and more.
After each team created a hole, the teens played through the course, rotating around to all 9 holes so they got a chance to see how creative the other teams were. They also found out that playing the holes was, in some ways, even harder than building them!
The program was fairly inexpensive--the main cost was the duct tape--and the golf clubs were loaned by a local golf course for the night. T
he lumber that you see pictured was donated by Home Depot, who even cut it down to size for us. Hooray for community partnerships!
I didn't invent this idea of playing minigolf in the library. I do, however, know a good idea when I see one on Pinterest! From the time I repinned the picture of another library's minigolf program, I knew it would be a really fun thing that I would implement before the year was out. When I started planning, I realized it would take me forever to set up a whole golf course myself, so the idea of having the kids actually build it during the program was born from a need to make it easier on me (and realistically realizing that it would be hard even for a large crew of helpers to set up a whole golf course between closing and the start of the program). My amazing Teen Advisory Board teens helped with the set up and take down, which also made a difference. As it turned out, the building was probably the most fun part and is really a STEM activity, measuring, fitting, checking angles, and testing to see if your concept worked, just to name a few.
Submitted by L. Renshaw
Teen Librarian
South Jordan Library (Salt Lake County Library Services)
