Cheddar: A Year in Review

Submitted by Signe Madson

Howdy everyone, long time no see. As some of you might remember we adopted a cow at the Cumming Library last year. As we wrap up the school year here is what we and Cheddar have been up to. Cheddar and Patrons: It has been so fun seeing Cheddar grow each month this year. I know personally it was always a treat to get an email saying there was a new update.

I think my own favorites were the snow day picture of Cheddar, Cheddar at the cow competition, and any of the photos of Cheddar with her tongue out.

One big takeaway I have learned is cows grow quickly and weigh a lot. The jumps between weights were always surprising to see. She started out at 70 pounds at birth, and at six months she is 315 pounds.

One unexpected element of the program is that many of the kids visiting the library had also adopted Cheddar in their classrooms at school. They were all familiar with her and very excited to let us know. During March Moo-dness, they would comment on the fact side of the voting board letting us know the different schools they went to and their thoughts on Cheddar. 

Programming:

We kicked off our year of Cheddar programming with a Cowabunga story time. During the story time, we did various cow activities like a Cowabunga flannel board and the milkshake song. I then introduced the group to Cheddar. Children and their caregivers were all pretty excited to meet Cheddar. After the story time, I put up the cow end cap, and have kept it updated so patrons could keep up to date about Cheddar. We also made a reading list of books featuring cows, so those curious about Cheddar could learn more about our Bovine friends.

In March I put up a March Moo-dness voting board. I put up eight different types of cows and let kids vote on what they thought was the cutest cow. On the back of the rolling board, I put up various pictures of Cheddar throughout the year along with facts about Cheddar, cows, and dairy farming. Kids were pretty passionate about which cow they thought should win. A few times after updating the board, a kid would let me know they were excited because the cow they voted for moved on to the next round. The final match up was between a Belgium Blue cow and a Highland Cow. The winner ended up being the Highland cow, who had a very fervent voter base.

The most recent activity we are doing is our “Reading is Amoooozing” cow wall. I put Cheddar on the wall and die cut cows for the kids to decorate and add to the field. It has been so fun to see the various ways kids have decorated their cows. I’ve seen rainbow cows, strawberry cows, happy cows, multi-colored cows, a cow with the flag of Argentina, and so many more. The kids have really enjoyed getting to collaborate together to fill up the wall. They also have put the cows in fun and unique places. One day when I came into work, I was surprised to see Cheddar had been overridden by many little cows climbing up her back.

During the summer, we will have the Georgia Mobile Dairy Classroom visit, which will be our grand finale to our year with Cheddar.

Final Thoughts: Overall, I think the program has been a success at our branch. Children and their caregivers were always excited to see Cheddar and hear more about her. We, as the staff, also really enjoyed getting the updates and having access to cute pictures of baby cows. On paper, the program is more oriented towards classrooms, but there were plenty of ways to adapt the materials they provided for a library audience.