Summer Reading Club at the Pincher Creek library

Justine Jorgensen

On Thursday afternoon July 17 a group of grade six to eight students met at the Pincher Creek library for the TD Bank Summer Reading Program. The free six week program started last week, with kindergarten to grade one on Tuesdays, grade two to grade five on Wednesdays, and grade six to eight on Thursdays. The objective is to promote literacy throughout the summer and encourage the kids to read.

The program is based out of Lethbridge and each year a new topic is chosen; this year's theme is 'Eureka!'. Sally Turner and Waneeta Fisher have been running the sessions. "Our first week was just to introduce Eureka! and that whole concept. We talked about different inventors and their eureka moments and then this week we did Flight, and Flying," explained Fisher. She also mentioned that, for each group, the lessons change slightly - become more developed - in order to reach the appropriate audience.

As each session involves activities for the kids, Thursday's class included the making and testing of paper airplanes, as well as the reading of a book on Wilbur and Orville Wright, the famous brothers credited with inventing and building the world's first successful airplane. Each student was actively involved and seemed to be enjoying the time in the classroom as well as outside in the heat.

"Professor" Waneeta Fisher

"Professor" Sally Turner

The topic next week will be Space and after that: Dinosaurs. Fisher revealed that a video conference has been arranged with the Tyrell Museum in Drumheller. "We'll have a virtual tour of the museum. They have two staff that'll be there and take us around the museum and show the kids, which should be pretty cool." Following Dinosaurs will be Vikings, ending with the final Mystery theme.

Not only will the students be able to participate in fun, hands-on activities each week, there is another aspect to the program. "We're trying to get them to read, at least ten hours a week, if they can, whether it's with mom or dad at nighttime or with themselves. And then if they come in with their reading logs and show us the titles of the books they've read and the author and the amount of minutes or hours that they've read, after ten hours they get another prize from us." Turner added, "For every five books they read, they get their name put in the Summer Reading Club draw, for a grand prize." This grand prize is a secret; one of the past years, it was a plane ride in Lethbridge, among other things. "It's usually something pretty good," Fisher smiled.

The Summer Reading Program is also aimed towards getting teens involved; in order to achieve this, a book club has been formed. Fisher explained that two books have been chosen for the participants to read: Ender's Game and A Wrinkle in Time. There will be a discussion night and the teens will have the ability to take a movie home and watch the film version of the book.

Between all the groups of the program, there are about fifty kids registered. Many elementary school students were given a free library card for a free membership during the two summer months. According to Fisher, this has proved to be quite popular. Furthermore, any kids who are unable to participate in the program, due to circumstances such as living in the country or schedules that do not match up, can still keep track of their hours and the books they read in order to win prizes. "There's lots of ways to participate in the program. It's a lot of fun," said Fisher.

Sally Turner submitted photo

Sally Turner submitted photo