Encouraging Others to Raise Baby Gamers
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Not quite 2 years ago, I shared that I had just started sponsoring a "Tabletop Gaming Club" for elementary school-aged kids out of the library where I work. Fast-forward to the present and this particular Gaming Club (which the kids that participate in it refer to it as HAK Club) has been so popular that we featured it as part of our summer reading programming for the past 2 summers in the library where I work + it has expanded into 2 groups. HAK Club Lvl 1 and HAK Club Lvl 2. The Lvl 1 group is still the original model, 5-6th graders, while the Lvl 2 group are Jr. High kids who want to learn more mechanics and build on what they picked up from the first group which was learning to role play, do collaborative storytelling and also the basics of the system of choice for the kids. (They all seem to prefer playing D&D 5th Ed, but we also keep Pathfinder, Savage Worlds and Hero Kids available for them.)
And now the older of those Lvl 2 kids have actually started coming in on their own to the library and setting up a gaming table to run a game for their own friends, letting the Tabletop Gaming Bug spread to other kids!! This is something that has had me incredibly happy.
And tonight I just found out that the Gen Con Trade Day Event that I submitted to teach other librarians/teachers how we started this and the ups/downs of it since it began has been accepted and will be part of the line up of events offered on Trade Day. So I had to share, with people that I figure will get why I'm so very-very excited about this.
