Vancouver Island Regional Library and Country Club Centre are planning a whale of a time for kids with Lego Big Build event aimed at enticing more children to join the library’s Summer Reading Club.
Robin Sather, Canada’s only Lego Certified Professional, will take three days to build a giant Lego whale in Country Club Centre, which partnered with Friends of the Library to sponsor the roughly $4,000 cost to bring Sather to Nanaimo.
“[The Big Lego Build] is in support of the Summer Reading Club,” said Julie Carter, librarian at the Wellington library branch. “That’s why we’re having it at this time of year. We’re hoping that having this Lego Big Build event at the mall will attract some people who don’t normally use the library and get them all signed up for Summer Reading Club.”
Carter hosts a Lego Club build day at the library one Saturday each month for children ages five to 12, which helps drum up interest in the Summer Reading Club. The Lego Club takes in 30 children at a time and there is always a waiting list of children hoping to join.
Carter said playing with Lego helps develop children’s thinking and motor skills.
“It does things like inspire creativity and imagination in children, which helps build an active mind,” Carter said. “It also helps them develop their concentration skills and the ability to sit and work at a task and work towards something.”
The Summer Reading Clubs are hosted at Nanaimo’s three library branches, including the Harbourfront branch, Wellington branch and Nanaimo North branch scheduled to open this summer. The library places no limit to how many children can join.
“We want as many kids as possible to sign up, for sure,” Carter said.
This is the first Lego Big Build event the library has hosted. The event happens at Country Club Centre June 19-21 during mall hours of 9:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Thursday and Friday, and 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on Saturday.
“Library staff will be down there and we’re going to have tables set out for kids to make their own creations, too,” Carter said. “It’s fun to watch [Sather] build, but we also want to get the kids building their own things and putting them on display for everybody to see.”
For more information on the library’s Lego or summer reading clubs, please visit the Vancouver Island Regional Library website at http://www.virl.bc.ca.
To learn more about Sather and view a portfolio of his previous creations, please visit his website at www.brickville.ca.