The Webster Parish Library, located at 521 East & West St., has several end-of-the-summer activities coming up for children and their families.
The library is finishing up the Summer Reading Program and will be putting on more activities for the youth of the community to come and soak up the last bits of summer.
One of the up-coming events will be on July 20 and is a teens and kids escape room, it will take place from 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. The activity is split up into groups of four that will go in at different intervals with ten participants in each group.
The theme of the escape room is the “crazy librarian’s office,” which features clues hidden in the clutter strewn across the librarian’s “office.” There will be three different puzzles that must be solved in order to get to the final puzzle. After the final clue is deciphered, the participants will receive a surprise for figuring out the escape room’s clues.
“Tomorrow I have an escape room, it’s a ‘crazy librarian’s office’ that you have to escape. It’s called ‘escape the library,’ and there is a children’s one and a teen one. They’re going to have to solve all these riddles, and it’s not like a locked escape room, they’re going to find the key to a box with a surprise inside,” said library staff member Aubrie Stahl.
Today, the library hosted a Turkish tile painting event for teens. Participants painted their own piece of tile while learning about the history and culture of Turkey.
The library also hosts a teen readers club, where members meet and discuss the books they are currently reading.
“Next week on Thursday I have a teen readers club, and that’s basically instead of a book club where we all read a specific book they can come and talk about a book that they’re reading and maybe get someone interested in that. Another thing I do is if they all want to read a book, I will get the book for them and we’ll all read the same book. A lot of the time it’s just like pop-culture conversations and talking about books… We do the teen reader club once a month,” said Stahl.
Along with the reading club, Stahl plans to have more fun and entertaining events during August prior to the start of school.
“For August they’re going back to school so I want to do something fun for them so they can hang onto a little bit of summer. I’m going to do water balloons, it’s going to be called ‘Water Balloon Extravaganza’ or something and we’re going to have it at the front of the library,” said Stahl.
These events will be enjoyable for the youth of the community before they go back to school.
“I thought also since we have a lot of sidewalk chalk, we should decorate the staff parking lot. I’m starting my hula hoop group back up as well, and I’m trying to do tie dye t-shirts where you bring your own shirt… Most everything is going to be outside, like the water balloons and the sidewalk chalk, tie-dye will be inside. Possibly going to have a game night as well,” said Stahl.
Most events hosted by the library are educational, but with school approaching, the library wanted to do something so the community could have some fun at the end of the summer.
“Normally I wouldn’t do all these crazy, silly events but I try to make some stuff at least a little bit educational. I like to do art stuff, I love to do art nights where they can come up here and create something. I give them tons of different supplies and I try to have art night once every couple of months. Sometimes I do it every month but it depends on how many people I have coming… It’s a lot of arts and crafts stuff,” said Stahl.
As for the up-coming school year, the library provides several facilities and resources for students to use for studying and school work.
“Last year I did study hall, but I haven’t done it since the school year ended. I will say that kids do come up to the library and use the library facilities a lot to study… We do have a lot of resources that they can come to the library to find out about, like Homework Louisiana. There’s things here that they can use, I don’t really have a program for it. There’s a lot of stuff up here that they can use and the facilities we have like study rooms, computers and books. There’s plenty of stuff up here for them to use to study, but i don’t have a set in stone event but hopefully i can start study hall back up,” said Stahl.
Some of the up-coming events do not have official dates but those dates will be up on the library’s website by Saturday.
“I do know what events I’m going to be doing, I just don’t know when I’m going to be doing, but I will have it up by Saturday; it’ll be on the library’s Communico website.. that’s what I’ve got going on right now. I hate that I don’t have any set in stone dates, normally I would,” said Stahl.