Posts Categorized: Youth Services

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Block Party! LEGO Brick Donations Needed!

We want to start a LEGO® Club for kids in elementary and middle school!  But to do that, we need your help.  We’re looking for permanent donations of your new or gently-used LEGO bricks for our club members to use. Was one of your New Year’s Resolutions to clear out the attic?  Have your LEGO bricks not been used for years? Then bring them to the library to help us build a LEGO Club.

Why a LEGO club? Playing with LEGO bricks offers children physical and imaginative play along with the challenge of designing a new project each time they use Legos.   They develop math and problem solving skills that will help them down the road as they start to learn higher forms of math and logic.  And playing with LEGO bricks – especially alongside other kids – is just fun!

Old sets, new sets, mismatched jumbles, wheels, people, specialty sets – we’ll be thrilled to accept all the LEGO bricks you can find!  Donated LEGO bricks can be dropped off at the Youth Services desk during regular library hours.  If you’d like, we will happily provide a receipt for your donation.  For more information, please give our Youth Services department a call at 616.846.5770 ext. 134.

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Santa is Coming to Storytime!

We’ll be having a very special guest this week at storytime – Santa Claus himself!  Whether you come to bedtime storytime tonight at 7pm or preschool storytime on Thursday and Friday at 10:30am, Mr. Claus will be there to chat and take pictures with kids.  There will also be some special holiday-themed stories, and I’ve heard Santa will be bringing a special storytime treat!

After this week, storytime will be on hiatus for two weeks.  We’ll pick back up again the week of January 7 – bedtime storytime is on the 8th at 7pm and preschool storytime is on the 10th and 11th at 10:30am.   Come this week to visit with Santa Claus then have a wonderful holiday and come back to see us in the New Year!

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Once Upon a December

Ready or not, December has come! The holidays are in full swing, and the library is bustling with some great seasonal programs.  As I’m writing this, the weather outside is anything but seasonal; however the calendar still tells me December, the holiday trees are up, and winter break edges ever closer.

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19th Annual Children’s Bookmark Awards Ceremony

If you have school-aged children (or now grown-up children), you might be aware of our annual Children’s Bookmark Contest.  The contest is sponsored by our wonderful Friends of the Library group, and over the past 19 years, thousands of students have participated.  This year was extra-exciting for us as the first year the bookmarks were submitted in color!  The theme this year was Color Your World – Read! We received nearly 300 amazing entries.  The judges had an incredibly difficult job, and I’m very glad I didn’t have to make those choices!

This past Saturday was our Bookmarks Award Ceremony.  Family and friends of the winners and honorable mentions were invited, and a crowd came and had a great time! We were very lucky to have author Amy Young read for us during the ceremony and to host Spring Lake Village Manager Christine Burns as the presenter of prizes.  Youth Services Librarian Elizabeth Griffin was our Master of Ceremonies.

Bookmarks have been printed from all the winning designs. They’re available in the library now – and all the entries have been posted in Youth Services.  To see pictures of the ceremony, all the winning bookmarks, and more, click the link below for the rest of this post.

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Book Spine Poetry Contest – Just for Teens!

Teen Read Week is coming!  October 14-20 is a celebration of all teens, teen books, and teens at the library!  As part of our festivities, we’re hosting a book spine poetry contest for all kids ages 10-18.  What’s book spine poetry?  How do you enter?  Don’t worry, we’ll talk about all that and more.

Book spine poetry is creating a poem using book titles.  The poem can incorporate any element of the spine (the part of the book that faces out when it’s on the shelf) you like – color, text, graphics, etc.  The theme and length are up to you too.  Anything goes!  You just have to create it.

There’s some great examples of book spine poetry on the internet, and we’ve set up a few displays at the library with some examples of our own.  So what do you think?  Quick and fun, right?

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