Libraries routinely support the 0-5 crowd in early literacy development, but we often do less direct literacy-building programming for kids once they graduate into elementary school. How can we continue to nurture kids’ love of stories, build their reading and writing skills, and take a more direct approach to preventing the dreaded “summer slide”? Staff at Multnomah County Library created Camp Read and Big Kids’ Story Club to fill this need, and made the programs portable and customizable for different branches, staff, and outreach sites. Whether a one week summer camp at the library, a weekly hour-long program at an outreach site, or a way to provide the next level of programming for storytime graduates, we’ve culled some great ideas for active games, creative book-related activities, and engaging play. Plus we’ll share ideas for promoting and evaluating our success.
