Doors are open and young summer readers come in and go directly towards bookshelves. The TD summer reading program at the Estevan Public Library (EPL) is at its second week and participating children have already caught the reading wave.
“We still have a bunch of kids signing up. We have about 70 kids, so we are at great attendance and we are having a lot of fun,” said summer reading program co-ordinator Sarah Wright.
Kids come once a week for two hours for eight weeks. And every week they learn something new.
At the beginning of each class, they individually start reading books of their choice. That allows them to get into reading and the co-ordinator to have them all together while everybody is coming in. Then kids proceed with reading as a class. And in the end, if they want to do something else that involves the particular book they read, they do some crafts or play games.
“This week we are doing fairy tales. And we have The Three Little Pigs, and they are building houses and trying to see if they can blow them over,” said Wright.
Houses were built of popsicle sticks, paper and pipe cleaners, so kids had a lot of fun practising their house-blowing abilities. Usually, the activities are a little altered depending on the age group and the participants.
TD provides a long list of recommended books and then the library decides on what to get. They have books about insects, comic books, graphic novels and other types of pieces that kids are more drawn to and that fit the chosen theme. And so far kids have been quite excited about the program.
“A lot of the kids love just being able to record them all (books) and to have the ability to win prizes at the end,” said Wright.
To stimulate them to read the library came up with a little contest. For every half hour of reading each kid gets a paper leaf. All leaves are put on the wall to form the group’s tree, and in the end, the highest reading class will have a big party.
The program was developed to help keep children reading during the summer months.
“The whole point of summer reading in the end is to have as many kids reading throughout the summer, so they don’t forget all the skills that they learned during their school year,” said Wright.
On top of that, participants can learn a lot of social skills that may be lost during the summer, especially if they are not attending other camps.
So far, morning groups are almost filled to capacity with about 20 children attending, while most afternoon groups still have a few spots open. To register people can call the library during their work hours. As with the rest of the library services, the summer reading program is free of charge.
