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.
