KALISPELL — During the summertime, families are eager to hit the road with trips and new adventures, and often children forget what they had learned during the school year.
But ImagineIf Libraries in the Flathead are stopping the summer slide with Summer Experience kits.
The libraries are offering summer experience kits to people of all ages, to continue reading while benefiting from tactile play.
“This is to encourage reading and hands-on play all summer long,” said ImagineIf Youth Services Librarian Ellie Newell.
Newell says these kits provide self-paced reading, science, technology, engineering, art and math, and nature activities.
She told MTN News the kits also prevent the Summer Slide for little ones five and younger, elementary-aged kids, tweens and teens in middle and high school,
“The phenomena that happens when these kids have all these reading and math skills at the end of the school year, and if they don’t practice those skills over the summer, you lose it,” said Newell.
Some families say that they super excited to learn from the experiences within these kits,
“We really like books, and reading, we’ve always loved the library, we have always done the summer reading program so we came to pick them up,” said Cherith Koffman, who brought her two kids to pick up experience kits -- and to find books for her son.
It isn’t just the Koffman’s loving the kits either, "we made 2,000 kits, and they’re going so fast, which is wonderful I am so glad the community wants them.”
You can visit any of the ImagineIF library locations to pick up the kits or visit their website here.
