Dream Big, Read! Montana Libraries’ Summer Reading Program

Check out this post submitted my Katie Wise, Campus Corps Leader at Fort Peck Community College!

I personally have a lot of fun memories of my home library’s summer reading program, it made reading more than something I did at school, but part of my life. This summer I had the pleasure of volunteering with the Ft. Peck Library’s Summer Reading Program, and get a whole new bunch of kids into reading outside the school room. Libraries throughout Montana are hosting their Summer Reading Programs. 

This year’s theme is Dream Big, Read! which encourages kids to consider dreams both as nighttime visions and goals for their futures, and how reading can enhance both of them.  The reading program has children from Kindergarten through Fifth grade marking off the hours they’ve read with stickers with prizes awarded at the end. The goal of the reading program is to keep kids reading and thinking over the summer, retaining the skills they learned in school, and encouraging reading as a fun activity outside of the classroom. Most Montana libraries are participating in the program, and including activities over the summer to keep kids involved with the program.

 At the Ft. Peck Library, Shawn Kennalty and I hosted a summer reading day camp, with mornings filled with reading, crafts, and even a puppet show. We invited Poplar Elementary School’s Summer program to some of our activities and encouraged the students to sign up. We held a dream jar, where participants could write down their dreams to be shared at the end of the program, and had kids share their dreams of growing up (with plenty of Veterinarians, Nurses, Firefighters and Video Gamers). We also put together a special book shelf full of titles surrounding the subject of dreaming, nighttime, and goal reaching for the participants to peruse. All of this was topped off with an awards party with pizza, prizes and face painting.

Most Libraries are running their summer reading programs through July and even into August. The supplies and resources for the reading program are distributed by The Collaborative Summer Library Program (CSLP), its surrounding activities are run by individual libraries. Although the  Parmly Billings Library and the Bozeman Public Library  both have online information about their events, every library is doing different activities for the program and the best way to find out how you can contribute is to go to the library and ask how you can help. The library may need help with everything from reading to kids at story time, gathering and distributing craft materials, monitoring activities, or even fundraising to ensure every kid gets a prize for completing their reading hours. If your library doesn’t offer the program, you can ask them to join CSLP. By volunteering for this program you are encouraging children to love books and see the library as fun place to go.