TORRINGTON – As the schools have gone to a four-day school week, Goshen County has been looking for alternative things for school aged kids to do on Friday. Goshen County Library has been working on constructive activities for local kids to do. 

“Our big goal is to provide activities for kids on Friday’s. That’s like the big overarching goal, to engage kids in conversation and in activities, build literacy skills and hopefully build on this,” Cristine Braddy, the library’s director shared.

Last Friday, the library held a book club for fourth through eighth graders. The kids read the book The Wild Robot and met at the library to discuss what they read. They also had donuts available. 

“How this one came about is, we talked about this book this summer with some of our summer reading kids, so we wanted to have a meet up again and then, the movies coming out so obviously it’s a great time to talk about it,” Braddy shared. 

She said she would like to have more book groups happening for the kids. This group will take place one time in a month. As a parent, she understands that kids need a place to go and activities to keep them busy when they are out of school. She is hoping to engage the young minds of Goshen County. 

“I know, I’m a mom. I don’t want my kid to sit at home and watch TV all day. I want them to read and you know do something active with his brain and do something active with his body and you know engage the world,” Braddy said. 

This book club is one of the many ideas the library has for Fridays. Other ideas they have include their Early Explorers group with the preschool kids, this will take place next week. The week after that they will have their Thinking Money event. The goal of this is to teach children financial literacy through games and activities. The library received a grant to make this happen. They discuss things from what the coins are and their values to how to save money. 

They also would like to include things like board games, crafts, stories, and other things to keep the kids occupied on these Friday mornings. 

There are a number of things available to the kids at the library even when they are not doing events. They have iPads available for the kids to play Minecraft and other games on. They have snap circuits and Legos to build with. 

She is also available for the kids to come talk about books they are reading or wanting to read. She just wants to build a relationship with the kids and their families and give them a space to learn and explore. 

“Every kid needs a different space for that, like some kids really need like a library with space, and some kids need a football field, and some kids need a basketball court, some kids want to sit and do crafts,” Braddy said. 

Helping director Braddy with these Friday activities, is Niki Craig. Craig is an early literacy interventionist for the school district. The library is bringing in a few specialists for their activities such as other interventionists and a therapist.

For the young people looking for an outlet on Friday mornings, Goshen County Library is the place to be. The staff will happy welcome as many kids as they can get.