Local library celebrates 25th Family Literacy Day

A local library celebrated the 25th anniversary of Family Literacy Day in Canada last week.  

Nicole Gregoire, head librarian at the Jolys Regional Library says she was thrilled with the turnout at the event.  

While the official date of Family Literacy Day Canada was on Saturday, January 27, the library in St Pierre held their celebration on the Thursday evening.   

Gregoire says the national day is meant to raise awareness about the importance of reading and engaging in literacy-related activities as a family.   

“So, we read some books, and we created a poem about family. We asked the kids to help us find words that describe the letter of each word in the word, family.” 

“The children came up with all kinds of amazing ideas and words, words that I hadn't even thought of, which was really fun. So, we got really creative by creating that poem.” 

Gregoire says they also played Pictionary alongside a game of hid-and-seek in the library.  

“So, the object of the game was to draw an image from the word that you read, and then you had to go find a book in the library that had that specific word, and because we were a bilingual library, we had both French and English words mixed in there.” 

She says the children were once super excited to play Pictionary, “because they were just shouting out all kinds of different ideas. But then they got to run through the library and try and be the first one to find a book with either the word or the image that was represented through Pictionary. So, it was really fun. Then we finished off with cake. Who can't go wrong with cake?”

Gregoire notes it was a fun evening with many families present.  

“It was a great gathering.  We had children from all age groups. We had families from different backgrounds. It was just a really fun, community event to have at the Library.” 

“It was actually a great success. It's all about community building, making connections, and I believe that we hit the mark on that, and so to me it was a great success.” 

Riding on the coattails of Family Literacy Day, moving into "I love to read" month, the busyness continues at Jolys Regional Library. Gregoire says they have several events together with the Ecole Heritage School, to which they are attached, which the community is invited to join in.

“The first one is with Corny Rempel. He will be coming to Ecole Heritage school on Thursday February 1, at 9am for “I love to read” month. Then next week Tuesday, we have Manitoba author, David E Robertson stopping by and he's going to be reading at the library at 8:50am. This event is also open to the public. He has written some amazing books, both for adults and for children, as well as some non-fiction work. He's just an amazing author, so really excited about that.”

The activities continue in February at the Jolys Regional Library as they are collaborating with the St. Pierre Arena Parks and Rec during their annual Winter Festival on Sunday, February 18th.

“We will be hosting a story hour and craft at the St. Pierre Rec Centre at 10:30am. And then later this month, on February 24th, the St Pierre Agricultural Society is organizing a seed swap. And so that'll take place here at the library at 10am.”

She notes that 2023 was the first year that St Pierre had a community garden, which turned out to be hugely successful, and Gregoire says, local gardeners will be coming to the library with their favourite seeds to exchange for someone else’s flowers or vegetables.

"They'll bring in either their heritage seeds or just their regular seeds and you just swap them. You get to talk to other gardeners. You get to learn a bit about agriculture.”

 Find more exciting events happening at the Joly Regional Library in 2024.