Summer Reading Programs

It seems that this year’s Summer Reading Program for the children and teens just started. And now, before you know it, it’s over. We started the last week of May (the day after Memorial Day) and just ended this past Friday. Time flies when you’re having fun.

As usual, it was a fun-filled and activity-packed Summer Reading Program. There were special programs almost every day during the week with crafts and story times for the children and teens.

Some of the highlights of the special programming focused on science. We had Becky Myers from Mad Science of Central Oklahoma and Dr. Patrick Ross of Southwestern College in Winfield stop by and show the wonders of science.

Myers wowed the crowd with her science experiments, including a genie in a bottle, an air drum and balloons. There was plenty of gas filling the air and liquids gushing and frothing.

Ross had his own light show in presenting “Who Glows There.” The Southwestern College professor brought fireflies as well as glowing scorpions, mushrooms, fish, and even microbes.  Equipped with a state of the art microscope and camera projection system, Ross demonstrated how even microscopic organisms are able to generate their own light.

Participants got to color with glow-in-the-dark markers and even sampled some fluorescent candy.

But it wasn’t just traditional science that took center stage during the Summer Reading Program, Patsy Guinn of the Liberal Police Department ventured in and did a presentation of the science of crime investigations.

Guinn gave details on what goes on at a crime scene and how she collects evidence. Participants got a chance to go through the process of lifting fingerprints from objects with special dust and tape.

But we had more than just science, we had movies and crafts and storytellers and sleepovers and meditation and relaxation. Hopefully, we had something for everybody.

And while the activities are a big part of the program, the main part is to keep everyone reading.

After you go to a program, maybe you’ll be interested enough to learn more about the activity, go through the library and search for it. Whether it’s a reference book on fireflies or a story about a mad scientist, if the activity spurred you on to read, that’s a good thing.

Now the children and teen Summer Reading programs may be over, but the adult program is still ongoing and will last through July.

Adult Summer Reading Schedule for July:

July 2: Movie at 6 p.m.

July 10: Book chat at 6:30 p.m.

July 16: Movie at 6 p.m.

July 19: Murder Mystery at 6 p.m. (Sign up required. Space is limited. Must be signed up for summer reading.)

July 31: Final day to submit tickets. (Write down the books that you have read during summer reading. The more tickets you have entered, the better chance you have at winning prizes.)

Also July will be “Space Movie” month. We’ll be showing family-friendly movies with an outer space theme on Wednesdays in July at 2 p.m. We’ll be showing movies on July 11, 18 and 25.