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Summer Reading Fun at the Wheatland Regional Library

The Wheatland Regional Library is once again offering its free TD Summer Reading Club, but this year the program will be entirely online. The program, which is purely for fun, is designed to inspire kids to explore the fun of reading their way – the key to building a lifelong love of reading!

Readers, parents and guardians of pre-readers will be able to register online through the Wheatland Regional Library website or download a new reading tracker app, called Beanstack, and register through it.

To kick off the merrymaking, Wheatland Regional Library is hosting some Zoom entertainment. On Thursday, June 18, at 11 a.m., Sprinkles the Clown will perform “Red Ridinghood’s Magical Adventures” live via Zoom. Harpist and storyteller Chris Lindgren will follow up on Thursday, June 25, at 11 a.m. with “Chris Lindgren: Tickle Trunk of Tales, Tunes & Tricks.” On July 9, again, at 11 a.m., Sprinkles the Clown will do a live performance of “Miss Muffet’s Mixed-up Nursery Rhymes.”

This year’s theme is “Game On,” and the summer reading club participants can bring some structure to their free form summer of fun by creating and personalizing an online notebook and logging their reading. It’s not a test or a competition – nobody except the reader is keeping score. 

Kids can also feel part of a broader community of over 2000 public libraries across Canada by voting in the “Battle of the Books” and reviewing books to help other readers like themselves find the perfect book. The TD Summer Reading Club also offers weekly trivia, jokes, colouring pages, as well as a chance to read an original webcomic.

Wheatland Regional Library readers are encouraged to visit their app/play store, download the free Beanstack app, and select “Wheatland Regional Library” as their library. By doing this, they can get started earning virtual prizes and chances for raffles.

TD Summer Reading Club website offers access to many free ebooks, picture and audiobooks for children from online platforms, including Tumblebooks, Libby/Library2go, BookFlix, and Hoopla. 

All details about accessing the Summer Reading Club can be found on the Wheatland Regional Library website.

Their programs are not just for kids either because this year, Wheatland Regional Library is offering a region-wide Adult Reading Challenge. Some may wonder, why quantify leisure reading at all? Perhaps the most intuitive reason is that adding some structure to your reading life can make sure you read. Donalyn Miller, a reading ambassador and the author of two books about reading habits, asserts “the only difference between a non-reader and a reader is that a reader has a plan for future reading.” Wheatland Regional Library hopes that the reading app can help make reading more fun for all ages. And, although this reading challenge is designed for adults, anyone may participate.

This summer, participants in the TD Summer Reading Club will be rewarded with a special Wheatland Regional Library “Brag Tag” celebrating reading. There will also be a couple of benchmarks throughout the summer when readers can redeem rewards for more brag tags.

There are some very compelling arguments for establishing a joyful, relaxing reading habit during these unpredictable and unprecedented times. All of us, even very young children, have worries and feel stress. Our bodies respond to being exposed to stress, and when we feel especially powerless, the consequences of the stress response can increase. The good news is that this can be reversed by doing positive things that make us feel better. Now is the time to institute a new routine in your life and set aside a bit of time each day for reading in a comfortable setting, preferably outdoors, weather permitting. Develop, or recapture, a sense of peace by escaping into a good book.

Reading for pleasure helps shift our brains and help mitigate or offset the stress response. The Reading Agency, a U.K. charity whose mission is to get everyone “reading their way to a better life”, promotes reading as therapeutic for isolation-induced loneliness.

Reading for pleasure also has social benefits, and can help us feel involved with a broader community. Immersive reading for pleasure is when a reader is engaged or lost in a book. It develops the capacity to engage and immerse oneself, visualize meanings, relate to characters, and participate in making meaning.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Susan, the Program Manager with Wheatland Regional Library at programmanager@wheatland.sk.ca.

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