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Physical Literacy

Downward-Facing Goat: Programs for Animal and Human Health

Patrons doing yoga poses with rabbits

When you think of health programs in public libraries, you probably think of people. But public health includes the environments in which we live, which includes the animals around us. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has an entire website devoted to Healthy Pets, Healthy People, and this is the topic we will explore in this month’s blog. 

Bike Ride: Visualizing the 1919 Chicago Race Riots in Today’s City

Bikers during the ride

This event was a large-scale (approximately 140 people), 10-mile bike ride through Chicago's South Side neighborhoods, where violence erupted during the Chicago Race Riots of July 1919.

Facilitated by Blackstone Bicycle Works, a community-based nonprofit, and in partnership with other community-based groups, the tour started at the only marker of the riots in the city — at 29th Street and the lakefront — and then moved through the neighborhoods of Bronzeville, Bridgeport, the Stockyards and back to the lake.

Roll-n-Read

Children listening to storytime

Our library has partnered with our local Wood River Parks and Recreation Department to offer a weekly children's program for kids (ages 5 and younger) that combines gymnastics and motor skills with literacy.

The library provides staff and a story for story time; the parks department provices the gymnastics equipment and space for the little ones to play. 

Kinetic Literacy

Mother and son run in a race.

We spend a lot of time in libraryland talking about literacy. And there are an awful lot of literacy skills to learn and teach: pre-literacy skills, visual literacy, numeracy, cultural literacy, information and computer or digital literacy…whew! But one of the most overlooked and underappreciated literacy skills is the one we use almost constantly from the time we are born: kinetic literacy, also known as physical literacy.  Boy climbs on tightrope.</body></html>

Have Things, Will Program: Programming around Your Sports 'Library of Things'

Child kicking soccer ball

This month, two Michigan public libraries — Pontiac and Pinckney — acquired basketballs, footballs, baseballs and other sports equipment that can be checked out from the library for a two-week period, marking the beginning of Project Play: Southeast Michigan.

Of course, all that equipment does no good if it just sits on the shelves, so libraries are working with partners, in particular local YMCAs, to offer active play programs that show patrons how to utilize the new collections. 

Bilingual Market Storytime

Woman and children sit on blanket and look at books.

Saturday mornings in our small town are not the busiest time at the LP Fisher Public Library, especially in the summer. People have either gone to the lake, are working in their gardens, or are at the farmers market. We are situated in a fairly rural area and agriculture (both marget garden and industrial) makes up a fair bit of our economy. So in 2018, we decided to try going to where the farmers and shoppers are — the market.

Spring Break Challenge Quest: Yoga

Yoga pose silhouette

Spring Break Challenge Quest was a library district-wide, weeklong drop-in and passive program for students in kindergarten through sixth grade. Held during our schools' spring break, the series involved daily "quests" to challenge the mind and body, from scavenger hunts to binary coding to yoga.

The yoga quest challenged kids to look at printed silhouettes of yoga poses (e.g. child's pose, downward-facing dog) and figure out how to position their bodies into the poses shown. 

Programs for Maternal Health

Mom laying down holding baby over her head on a yoga mat.

While attending the Next Library Conference in Berlin in September 2018 I showed up for an interactive session called "Library Story-Times and Maternal Mental Health." The talk was led by a library assistant from Essex Libraries in the U.K. and two researchers from the firm Shared Intelligence. I was curious about how storytimes could benefit new mothers, especially given my own experience as a new mom.

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