A book club is up and running at the Sundre library to encourage students not to lose touch with reading over the summer.
“What we do is crafts and games and snacks and activities and stuff like that, and of course we read lots of stories,” said this year's program coordinator Melissa Toth.
Toth also fulfilled the position last year, but the annual program has been running at the library for several years.
It's a free drop-in program for kids aged four to 12. It started last week and will run until the end of August.
“It encourages reading in the kids. It gives them an opportunity to use it as something fun and social,” she said.
The club members receive rewards for various reading achievements, she noted.
“I've heard from several parents how during the summer most of their kids will be saying you know ‘can't go outside mom I've got to read this book so I can do this and this for book club',” she said.
“They can express themselves with reading. They can do it with friends. They see it as something positive and exciting and fun and I think that helps promote it later on during the school year.”
She has created a different theme for each week during this year's program, including gardening week and archaeology week, where they will learn about dinosaurs.
“Lots of it is different crafts that we do. So we'll do a craft that goes with our book, like maybe we'll make paper mache masks or piñatas,” she said. “Stuff that ties in with our reading and brings it to life a little bit.”
She has also started an art group at the library for teenagers called Create, which is separate from the reading club.
The members meet weekly and the goal is to express themselves through art, she said.
“I see a lot of them (teenagers) coming in here and, you know, you get the summer boredom and a lot of time is spent on computers and video games and stuff like that,” she said.
“I thought it would be a good thing to have for them, you know when they're not going on vacations, when they've got those in between weeks, to give them something to do.
“To build self esteem and to show them that it's cool, it's OK to be doing this stuff with their friends, and to give them a chance to express themselves to people their own age and to find their own way of doing it.”
