ARLINGTON — As the end of school approaches, families might be wondering how to keep their kids entertained over the summer, while still keeping their minds active.
“If you can keep your kids reading, even if it’s only four or five books over the summer, it’s been shown to help beat the summer slide,” said Lesla Wolf, children’s librarian for the Arlington Library.
Although the library’s summer reading program officially starts in June, its tie-in events don’t kick off until later in the month.
Teens get treated to the fun first, with “The Hungry Games” across the street from the library from noon to 2 p.m. June 20.
“It’s the last day of school, and it’s a half-day, so we take advantage of that with food-related games in the latter half of the day, from banana-jousting to dangling donut-eating,” teens’ librarian Abby Bormann said. “It’s also the final collection for the food drive we’ll be conducting that week because we want them to know that hunger is not a game for a lot of people.”
Younger kids will have to wait a week longer to get into the swing of things, with a raptor show at Presidents Elementary at 2 p.m. June 29, courtesy of the Sarvey Wildlife Center and the Arlington Boys & Girls Club.
From there, children’s summer activities will be offered at the library at 2 p.m. every Tuesday, and teens’ summer activities will be offered at 2 p.m. every Thursday.
“We try to be consistent with our days and times each week,” Wolf said. “It gets families into the habit of going to the library on a regular basis.”
The slogan for the children’s summer program is “On Your Mark … Get Set … Read!”
“Our activities will be sports-themed,” Wolf said. “We’ll have sports trivia contests, a round of strange sports called ‘Odd Ball,’ and an activity called ‘Ready, Set, Escape!’ That one requires you to put together clues to escape a real-life space. I don’t know how they’ll stage that in the library, though,” she laughed.
Wolf also plans to tie math and science into the activities, and promised some hands-on lessons in golf, before the summer program wraps up with the “Finishers Field Day” Aug. 9, again across the street from the library.
The slogan for the teens’ summer program is “Get in the Game: Read.”
“Because we don’t have air conditioning, we don’t want a bunch of hot, sweaty teenagers,” Bormann laughed, “so the games we’ll be focusing on are less sports and more gaming.”
To that end, trivia contests will focus on fandoms ranging from Star Wars and Star Trek to Marvel superheroes and Doctor Who, with the latter doubling as a costume contest.
Teens can even make “nerdy crafts” and learn to play Dungeons & Dragons. The first 15 people who show up will get a 20-sided dice.
“Depending on how much of a crowd we get, we might turn D&D into a regular program during the school year,” Bormann said.
Two teen events that take place on Saturdays, rather than Thursdays, are the “Ultimate Gaming Tournament” July 16, from 1-4 p.m., and the “Library Olympics” July 30 from 6-7:30 p.m.
“The gaming tournament will include board games, card games and video games,” Bormann said. “The Library Olympics will include competitions like book cart racing and balancing stacks.”
Wolf credited the Friends of the Arlington Library and the Sno-Isle Libraries Foundation with funding the programs.
And to keep children and teens reading throughout the summer, each one will receive a “Bronze” award of a free book for reading 10 hours, a “Silver” award of a Barnes & Noble gift card for reading 25 hours, and a “Gold” award of another free book for reading 50 hours.
Sign up online at either http://sno-isle.org/summerkids or http://sno-isle.org/summerteens, or in-person at the library, starting Wednesday, June 1.
