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Poland library hosts Lego my Library event
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Neighbors | Tim Cleveland.A child was well on his way to completing his project of a building during the Lego My Library event at the Poland library.
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Neighbors | Tim Cleveland.A group of children dove right in to begin building their creations during the Lego My Library event at the Poland library.
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Neighbors | Tim Cleveland.A young boy looked at a book about Legos to try and come up with an idea of what to build during the Lego My Library event.
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Neighbors | Tim Cleveland.A young man picked through Lego pieces to try and find the one he was looking for during the Lego My Library event.
By TIM CLEVELAND
As it has done monthly for the past two years, the Poland library hosted a Lego my Library event, in which children in grades kindergarten through six could come and build whatever they wanted out of Legos.
“We were looking for a way to get some of the school-age kids into the library,” Poland library youth librarian Annette Ahrens said. “We get the preschoolers in some of our programming. School-age kids are hard to get in. We know how much everybody loves Legos, so we decided to get some Legos and see if we could get some kids in here and it’s been really successful.”
The event attracted approximately 20 participants, who dove right in in building whatever they wanted.
“We always know that younger kids come in, so we have the Duplos [the larger Legos], so if younger siblings want to come with their older big brothers and sisters they have something they can play with too,” Ahrens said.
Ahrens said the one-hour event has helped the children with skills they will need in school.
“Really unintentionally, Legos help with the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) because it’s engineering; it’s building,” she said. “It’s using their imaginations to build. Our biggest thing is just trying to get the kids in the building. We hope then once they’re in here then they’ll check out books.”
Ahrens said the earlier events only attracted a handful of children, but once the library began displaying their creations until the following month’s event, attendance got larger. She also noted that there have been some very creative things that the children have made.
“I was really impressed with a kid one month who built a helicopter,” she said. “It was all blue and white and I was really impressed. You knew it was a helicopter. It was really cool. It had the rotors and everything on the top.”