Sam July 1st, 2009
This summer some of our younger patrons are participating in a gardening program. Under the guidance of Board Member Gail Mitchell, the kids have built and planted a “square foot” garden. They have planted tomato, beans, peppers, radishes, lettuce, carrots, onions and cucumbers.

- Ashleigh, Payson and Jacub harvest radishes from the garden.
Tags: children, gardens
Sam September 14th, 2008
The theme for this summer’s reading program was “Catch the Reading Bug”. We had 8 children and 3 teens participate. Each week the kids came and listened to our friend Colleen Mulvey tell her wonderful stories. After the story, they made crafts and chose the books that they were going to read. The children read for a combined 240 hours for the 6 week program. We are so proud of them! The kids were encouraged to read for 15 minutes each day and we focused on the time spent reading instead of the number of books read. On August 28, 2008 we had a party to celebrate the end of our program. We had a bunch of goodies to eat and we made bookmarks.

Teresa enjoying a snack

Children making bookmarks
After making the bookmarks, the children received their incentives for participating. Each child got an award certificate, a gift bag filled with fun things like rubber lizards, bugs in slime, a craft kit and bouncy balls. Included in the incentive was an envelope containing a $15 gift card to
Borders, a $3 gift certificate and a free Slush Puppie at the Little Supermarket, a free game of mini-putt at the
North Pole Campground & Inn, and 2 free ice cream cones at
Stewart’s. The children were thrilled to be rewarded and it was lovely to see them so excited.
I want to extend a huge thank you to two of our local businesses who helped make this a success for the kids. Roy Holzer from the Little Supermarket donated free Slush Puppies to the kids and Jim and Mary Ellen Carmelitano of the
North Pole Campground & Inn donated the free games of mini-putt. It is fantastic that these businesses are supporting our children in such a great way. We also had an anonymous donor who gave $100 toward the prizes. Thank you anonymous donor!
Tags: children, community, literacy, reading, summer