Teen Night is Back

            CALLING ALL TEENS!

The Calhoun County Library is excited to announce that the return of Teen Night is coming up soon and we would like to invite our teens ages 12 - 17 to come!

Teen Night is a biweekly program that is only available for teenagers. Parents may drop off teens or may wait in the library and read the newspaper or a good book while you wait.  On the 1^st and 3^rd Tuesdays of every month, between the months of September through May, we welcome teens ages 12-17 for Teen Night from 5 PM - 6:30 PM. We have decided to kick off Teen Night  on Tuesday, September 3, 2024, at 5 PM. We’ll be playing ice breaker games and minute-to-win-it games which teens love to play!  Of course, we can’t have our first Teen Night  without pizza so come and fill up on pizza and fun!

Teen Night is a free program and there is no need to sign up. Just visit the library and expect to have a great time with teenagers your age. We promise that we won’t bore you and learning is optional. Having fun is required!

Outreach with Calhoun County Library

            The Calhoun County Library is ready to resume some of its school programs again since the 2024 - 2025 school year is in full swing.

            To promote early literacy in schools, we visit 5K classes in all area schools for story time. During this time, we read books, sing songs, and do fingerplays. We even learn sign language! Our goal is to give our wonderful teachers a little bit of a break while also teaching our community kids that reading can be fun! We also leave theme-related crafts for the whole class to do. We go to each school once a month and look forward to seeing our favorite little readers every time, and we’ve found out that they look forward to seeing us, too! How cute is that?

            In addition to starting storytime again, we are going to start our afterschool STEM program at the afterschool centers. During the afterschool program, we perform scientific experiments and learn about chemical reactions and what makes things happen with them. We have made slime, homemade ice cream, invisible ink, and so much more. This is our way of keeping Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics fun. We understand that students don’t want to sit through another lesson after a full day of school, so we make sure to bring exciting elements to our afterschool STEM program. We attend each center once a month and always experiment with a different topic each time.

            We decided to go where the kids are because we don’t want to miss an opportunity to engage with little learners. Both of these programs are completely free and parents do not have to sign up for these programs. This is the Calhoun County Library’s way of keeping students immersed in learning which we feel is so important in our community. If you see us on the road in the library van, give us a wave because we’re probably on our way to one of the schools or afterschool centers!

AR Readers (2023 - 2024)

            When you visit the Calhoun County Library, you may notice posters of people you know in the windows of our children’s area. The Calhoun County Library loves readers and we wanted to acknowledge our young readers who have achieved greatness while reading during the 2023 - 2024 school year.

            In April, we sent out information asking schools for names of their top readers so that we could acknowledge them with a special poster featuring their pictures with their favorite books. All schools were given this opportunity to highlight some of their amazing student readers. 

            The Calhoun County Library created over 25 READ posters with students holding up their favorite books. These posters were created to coincide with the cover of each book and included intricate designs like football fields, oceans, and medieval castles. We gave these posters to the school librarians who presented them during a special program or on Awards Day.  Each child received a copy of his/her poster and the school received a copy to display around their school. We also wanted to show how proud we are of these readers so we have posted these in our children’s area at our library too!

            We would love for everyone to come visit our library and see our READ posters. We hope that parents and guardians can come see their child on display and continue to support literacy in their children’s lives. Remember that reading to your child is one of the best ways to give them an advantage in their education and in life. Next year, we hope to have even more posters to display! So, adults, continue to inform our community children to keep on reading!

A Special Volunteer Appreciation Luncheon

            “Volunteer. Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”

-Arthur Ashe

The Calhoun County Library depends on its community members to make us as successful as we are. We would not be able to achieve our goals without our supporters and volunteers. Almost all programs we have here at the Calhoun County Library use volunteers to run smoothly and to engage with our patrons. To show our appreciation of our volunteers every year, we hold an annual volunteer appreciation luncheon after the Summer Reading Program finale. This year, it fell on Thursday, July 25, 2024, at 12:30 PM. With over 30 attendees, we all got to eat a delicious meal provided by Palmetto Peach Catering, played a game to guess the staff members from their baby pictures, and even had a surprise video compilation of each staff member thanking the volunteers for all their hard work. Volunteers left with special gifts and smiles on their faces, and we sincerely hope they know how important they are to us. We are so grateful for everyone who decides to spend time at the Calhoun County Library. We are dedicated to our community and we love that our community is dedicated to us!