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.Â
Go Outside & Play Day was a launch event to promote our new Sport Port equipment-sharing collection of circulating youth sports equipment.
YMCA mobile programming, Y on the Fly, provided outside games, activities and snacks on the library lawn to celebrate and promote Sport Port.Â
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.
In the month of March, Activate Elgin’s March into Health programming, led by Gail Borden Public Library District, moves our whole community. In this celebration of National Nutrition Month, we facilitate more than 30 free wellness events for all ages and interests.
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.Â
The L.P. Fisher Public Library is well-known in our community (Woodstock, N.B., Canada) for our board game programs, like Connect Four Tournaments, Family Game Nights or our (competitive!) Chess Club.
This year the LP Fisher Public Library teamed up with our local run club, the River Valley Runners. They got a place to have their monthly meetings, access to awesome running books (and periodicals, thanks to the generous donation of a member), and we got to particpate in their fun runs and help plan their events. It has turned out to be a true win-win.
Creating a physical literacy program at your library doesn’t always have to happen under your roof. Take to the streets (or trails)! Are you already an avid runner or walker? Share your enthusiam. Would you like to be? Get motivated with some helpful volunteers.
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. Â
The LP Fisher Public Library in Woodstock, N.B., Canada has had a running club for a number of years now. In addition to our annual summertime Kids Kilometer Fun Run, we also hold a yearly Reindeer Run in partnership with the River Valley Runners (our local run club) and the Salvation Army.
When you think of providing programming at your library collaborating, with Special Olympics might not be the first organization that comes to mind. However, if you are in need of inclusive programming that reaches children with and without intellectual disabilities, Special Olympics Young Athletes program is a great place to start.
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.Â
If you weren't already familiar with the craze for painting rocks and hiding them, you might be living under, well … a large boulder.
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 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)Â and figure out how to position their bodies into the poses shown.Â
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.
If you spend any time on social media, especially if you follow other libraries, librarians or community groups, you’ve probably heard a lot of talk about intergenerational programming. I have read news stories about daycare groups being integrated with seniors’ homes, or 20-somethings finding mentors (and roommates!) in older adults.
Kids encounter stressful situations on a daily basis. Between growing academic demands, the pressures of social media, and various other physical, emotional and environmental stressors, young people need rest and relaxation just like the rest of us.
Something we notice a lot here at the LP Fisher Public Library (and you probably do, too) is that when many of our young patrons get their first library card they have a difficult time signing the back. And we're not just talking preschoolers who are still learning to form letters — we're talking preteens and teenagers. Sometimes even adults.
Looking to add some movement to your story times? Interested in physical literacy, but not sure where to start? Here are six groovy titles to get you off on the right foot (pun intended). You can find more kid-friendly physical literacy book reviews here. So gather some kid-friendly instruments and be prepared to make some noise!
