In collaboration with the National Youth Foundation, join us as Bella Hanson, organizer of the “I Matter” poetry contest and 2020 Nickelodeon Kid of the Year Top 50, facilitates this poetry workshop. If your poem is already ready, you can share it with us and get feedback. If not, you can use the time to brainstorm ideas and start writing.

Explore how a variety of fascinating creatures make the changes needed to survive the depths of winter. This workshop will feature special “wildlife” guests from Centre Wildlife.

“Springtime is egg time. They’re everywhere: closely guarded in the nests of birds, decorated as gifts and filling the shops as chocolate Easter treats. An egg is a universal symbol of fertility and new potential, and their perfect curved surfaces give them an instantly recognizable shape. But that shape hides a conundrum. We often describe fragile things as being like eggshells, because the thin fragments of a cracked shell are so frail. Yet a hen can sit on an egg and not break it; you may have seen demonstrations of people squeezing eggs in their hands and being unable to crush them. An egg is at once extraordinarily strong and hopelessly weak. How can this be?” In our Maker Monday STEM Class, we are going to take a look at how the strength of an egg comes from the shape by doing several experiments, including walking on them!

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.