In honour of the first day of school, the Back to School story time held at the Bonnyville Municipal Library looked to get children back into the groove.
On Tuesday, Aug. 28, children ages five to nine were invited to the library in Bonnyville to take part in the event, which Kim Dechaine, program organizer, hoped would get kids excited to be back in school and reading books again.
“One thing is to get them excited again about going back and remembering that stories and reading is a lot of fun. Some kids just take a break from everything so I really want them to always feel that books are fun and so that's what we try to pull out of it. There are activities but they're always based around some sort of literature.”
The children who attended the Back to School story time were given the chance to participate in a variety of activities. They sang songs, they searched for different back to school items in a scavenger hunt, they practiced their alphabet and listened to a story, and even created their own “magic back to school snack” in order to ease the nervousness of going back to school.
The Back to School story time event kicks off this year's programming going on at the library during the length of the school term.
Dechaine said once school begins again, the library's Rhyme Time and Story Time programs will begin shortly after.
“It starts off our programming because then we'll start regular story times the middle of September. We have two of those, we have a three to five-year-old program and we read stories and do a craft and then we have a zero to three-year-old program where the parents interact with the children and we sing songs and music and just work on pre-literacy skills,” explained Dechaine.
The Story Time program for ages three to five will be on Wednesday, Sept. 12, starting at 10:30 a.m. until 11:15 a.m. and continues every Wednesday at the same time for the duration of the school year.
The Rhyme Time program for ages zero to three will be held on Thursday mornings from 10:30 a.m. to 11 a.m., the first of which takes place on Sept. 13.
Dechaine said both programs are drop-in programs and are free so everyone is welcome.
And while children are working on the evolution of their literacy skills, adults will have a chance to sharpen their own as the adult book club will also resume meeting in September.
On Sept. 5, the club will meet in the lounge at the library in Bonnyville to discuss the first book on the club's list and will meet on the first Wednesday of every month afterwards.
Dechaine said books are chosen in advance by the book club and they will select books for the upcoming meetings at the club's first meeting on Sept. 5.
As with the children's reading groups, the adult book club is free to drop in on. Dechaine said it has grown recently and anyone is welcome to join the increasingly diverse club.
“It's growing, last year we started out with nine people and now I have 16 signed up. Not all 16 show up every month so we usually have 10-13 and we have snacks and we just sit around and discuss the book. It's a really fun group and very diverse, we have 20-year-olds to 65 to 70-year-olds.”
The library will be hosting a variety of different events throughout the year besides the book club and children's reading programs. Several authors will be appearing for author visits throughout the fall months. Reading parties and Christmas card making classes will also be held at the library.
To stay up to date on everything that is happening you can pick up a Fall 2012 Program Guide from the library for a complete schedule of events.
