The Summer Reading program at Elgin Public Library has wrapped up for another year. This year’s theme was “Adventure Begins At the Library”. Approximately 50 children attended story time each Monday and Wednesday to go on a “new adventure”. Week one found us going to Grandma’s house in a hot air balloon and then on to the Savannah. Week two adventures included the Petting Zoo and Adventures in Space. Billy the Sea Turtle led us on our journey into the Ocean while “Going On a Bear Hunt” took us on a trip into the “Wild”. Decorating their own aprons was a highlight of our Kitchen adventure while we ended with Prehistoric Adventures visiting the world of dinosaurs. We would like to thank our library board, craft helpers and parents who provided snacks for helping make our summer program a huge success.
Our Thursday activity time for 2nd through 5th grade students was led by Anne Dexter – Antelope County Extension Summer Intern. The 4-H Reading Connections program engages youth in extended 4-H learning opportunities in partnership with the Collaborative Summer Library Program. With that they talked about the 4 H’s: Head, Heart, Hands, and Health and began each activity with a physical activity to get their minds and bodies ready!
The first week they talked about Head and Mapping Their Community. The kids walked around the library to look at different ways to map their community around the library. They had to come up with symbols that would also go on their map key. Once they had a sense for that, they drew it down on paper making sure they had key symbols on their maps. They read the book Mapping Penny’s World.
During the second week they used their heart by talking about healthy foods that are good for you. The afternoon started off with fruit and veggie yoga in the back yard of the library and moved onto the main activity, TIE-DYE! Not your regular tie-dye but with liquid that was boiled off from purple cabbage, red beets and the spice turmeric. On to the third week where they talked Hands: getting outside and exploring nature with their hands. The activity started off with a nature scavenger hunt with in the block around the library. They either worked in groups or by themselves to find everything on the list! They then used some of those things to make a garden stone out of salt-dough.
The final week was about Health and Battle of the Senses with a couple taste testing experiments. First, they played an exciting game of hot-potato then broke out the blindfolds! The kids had to use their sense of feeling, smelling, and tasting to guess what food they were eating. Just Try One Bite is a book about kids trying to get their parents to put down the junk food and just try one bite of health food. Every kid could relate to that!
By Co-librarians Dianne Gunderson and Barb Bode
