Virtual Storytime for February, National Children’s Dental Health Month: Read two board books about brushing teeth correctly and the importance of dental hygiene; have children learn a rhyme about brushing, show children how to brush correctly using a StarSmilez Lil Al E Gator (stuffed animal with teeth) and a kids’ toothbrush, encourage parents to take kids to dentist and help them brush at home.

Virtual Storytime. The interactive room is full of activities, games, songs and stories. Explore the room by clicking on different objects which will lead to fun videos and activities. Youth Services Staff upload videos of reading books, as they read the books they give an over view of the book indicating each part of the book and add sign language at the beginning and end of the story.

Using https://jukebox.today/, participants can join a private room and submit songs from Youtube (all integrated in) to play on a playlist. While songs are playing, patrons can chat with each other in the chatbox provided. Lots of good conversation and a way to connect virtually for those who are dealing with Zoom fatigue.

We offered Take-N-Makes for adults using discarded library titles. For November we made turkeys and for December we did Christmas Trees. This was a great way to be eco-friendly on our part and offer paper crafting to our patrons.

Preparing our young girls to become confident young ladies

During the COVID-19 shutdown, our library hosted a series of virtual trivia nights that focused on popular books across multiple age groups. At the time, OverDrive was allowing multiple people to borrow Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. We used this book as our first Trivia Night. We purposely added questions where the answer would differ depending on if participants read the book or just watched the movie. the goal here was to encourage people to read the book. After doing the first trivia night, people started to request other books. We have done Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Lord of the Rings, and Twilight. All of the trivia nights were hosted on the free gaming platform Twitch.

Geisinger’s Health & Wellness Department provides free public classes on a variety of health subjects. This program was a six-week course that helped individuals living with chronic conditions. Geisinger partnered with UNC of NEPA to teach the class. The course gave advice and tips on how individuals can make lifestyle choices that can help make living with chronic illnesses easier to bear. The program was free to the public to attend with a maximum of 15 registered participants. Classes were held on weekdays in the evening at the library.

Ninja Training Day – Centre County Library, Bellefonte Branch

Ninjas have long been a standard in unconventional warfare so what better way to apply unconventional learning practices than to hold a Ninja Training Day. Children are often fascinated by ninjas, which made it very easy to fill all available spots for this program

The University of Scranton approached the public library to host a public Political Dialogue as part of its Community Conversations series. The goal of this program was to encourage open-mindedness and understanding of people who think differently on hot topics facing politics today. This included social, racial, and economic issues. Program Basics: We had close to 50 people attend the political dialogue. At the beginning of the program, they all sat together to listen to the facilitators from the University of Scranton give a brief description of the rules, set up, and goals of the program

We are a very small college with only 275 students. We were delighted to work with National Voters Registration Day and receive their grant for funds to support our student involvement. We had about 50 students participate in our event, so we are very happy! We had tables outside on a beautiful sunny day, with posters, stickers, paper registration forms, balloons, snacks, and QR codes to voter registration and voter information websites. We all used masks, gloves, and physical distancing procedures, of course! Most of the students said they were already registered, but they appreciated the opportunity to talk about it and find resources to learn more about the election and the ballot. It was a huge success!