Written by Mikayla Wobrak
Another school year is almost in the books, but at the Carnegie Carnegie, the excitement is just beginning.
Every summer, libraries across the country host Summer Reading programs to combat summer learning loss, or “the summer slide.” When school is out, students’ academic skills will often decline, resulting in lower test scores at the beginning of the next academic year. As the old adage goes: if you don’t use it, you might lose it.
But the good news is that spending time reading over the summer can help prevent this learning loss. That’s where libraries come in.
By participating in a library summer reading challenge, your child can exercise the cognitive muscles that will help them maintain their academic skills while offering opportunities for incentives.
At the Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall, the rules this year are simple: from June 14 through Aug. 15, you and your child can keep track of the minutes they spend reading (or that you spend reading together) to earn virtual tickets.
They can read print books, e-books, audiobooks, comic books, short stories. The best books to read are the ones that interest them.
These virtual tickets can be entered into drawings for prizes, such as puzzles, books, comics, gift cards and more. Winners for these prizes will be randomly selected Aug. 16 at our End of Summer Celebration.
The summer reading program will officially launch June 14, with a kickoff party from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Join your Carnegie Carnegie librarians and community members in Library Park (300 Beechwood Ave.) for a morning full of family fun. There will be arts and crafts, lawn games, stories, book giveaways and more.
Come and get registered for Summer Reading, or sign up yourself anytime at carnegiewest.beanstack.com, or on the Beanstack app.
Tickets for the prize drawings also can be earned by attending library programs. Kids of all ages can find something fun to do there.
For the youngest readers, we have three storytime programs per week starting June 14 — a baby-toddler storytime on Tuesdays for kids 3 or younger; a preschool storytime on Thursdays for kids 3 to 5 years old; and, weather permitting, we also will be hosting a special series of outdoor family storytimes on Wednesday mornings in Library Park.
Elementary-age students will be able to sign up for a workshop with Mad Science Pittsburgh to learn about the chemistry behind slime-making (while making some slime of their own to take home), join our bimonthly LEGO Club, read to a therapy dog, attend a screening of “A Minecraft Movie,” or take part in our Tuesday Poetry Club throughout the month of July. More programs may be added, so keep an eye on our events calendar at CarnegieCarnegie.org.
We even have a number of programs scheduled for teens this summer, including our monthly Anime Club and Gaming Days (for both video games and analog board games), as well as a Teen Crafternoons program on select Fridays through the Summer.
We’ll be unveiling a new Teen Creation Station this summer, which contains 14 new kits that teens can use at any time in the library to learn new skills and make art. These kits include watercolor paints, alcohol markers, block printing, fiber arts and much more.
There’s something for everyone here at the Carnegie Carnegie. Don’t forget to visit us this summer, join in on the summer reading challenge and read on.