Library to host reading week programming for students during time off

By John Watson Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Reading week will soon be upon many students which will translate into several days off of school. 

In preparation for this, the Strathmore Municipal Library has scheduled several programs to keep the community engaged during the down time. 

“Most of these just came to be very naturally. We weren’t trying to offer something for every age group or anything like that, it just kind of came about,” said Laura Henderson, assistant director for the library. 

Much of the content being offered has been geared towards a wide array of folks within the community. First on the docket will be a story time event geared towards school age kids, operating Feb. 17. 

“It’s just a really fun, interactive story time. We run regular literacy programs, we have not run a dedicated story time in a few years so this will be just something a bit more interactive, geared to younger school aged children,” said Henderson. “It’s during a time when we wouldn’t normally schedule something like this. We don’t typically have school aged children in during the day … it was an opportunity to have a story time but at a different time than normal, and available to those children at Golden Hills and Sacred Heart.”

Moving up in the age groups for their target audience, the following day, Feb. 18, will feature a small carnival-type program for teens, and aims to highlight several of the more regular things to do at the library. 

Henderson added in recent years, the library has gone from hosting little to no teen programming, to seeing hundreds of faces coming in and out the doors for activities. 

“We are really excited to have all these different programs. Our Dungeons and Dragons program last week had 30 teens in it, so we realized the teens are coming into the library, but they are spread out amongst all the different programs,” she said. “We thought there are probably other teens in town that could benefit or enjoy some of the programming that we have and just do not know that it is happening.”

Tables will feature games and snacks throughout the course of the event. Completing each activity will also enter participants to win a prize. 

At the end of the week, the library will be hosting a “Draw our Story” event, inviting members of the community to continue efforts from Family Literacy Day in developing the children’s story previously brainstormed. 

“We invited the community to come help us write a children’s story. One of our programmers facilitated that program … I was a little concerned that she was going to end up writing a story herself, but there were about 12 participants that were actively involved in writing the story,” said Henderson. “A children’s picture book needs pictures so we thought we would invite the community back to illustrate the book. It will be a complete book, and we can publish it and have it available in the library.”

The idea will be that participants can drop in, pick a page and illustrate what they would like to see on it. By the end, the drawings are intended to be implemented as created during the event.