On Saturday November 21st 2015 Community Police Officers Helen Romeo and Steven Carty visited the Philipsburg Jubilee Library in support of the Saturday Story Time held every Saturday at the library.
For the past two and a half years Mrs. Joseanne Peterson has been a voluntary story time coordinator for the Philipsburg library. Mrs. Peterson believes that young children who become regular library users will develop the early literacy, communication and social skills needed and will play a positive role in their schools of which they spend most of their time.
One of the objectives of the weekly story times is to make literacy fun through the use of a wide range of high-quality picture books, songs, poetry, finger plays, puppets and crafts. Another objective is to encourage parents to play an active role in developing their children’s interest in reading.
Every Saturday she invites children to join story time to enjoy literacy rich, hands on experience in a caring environment. Parents are provided, if requested, how to select and use age appropriate materials for the children. Aside form what is on the program, they always read a Dutch book and also practice (deaf) sign language spelling. A child that frequents the program knows the sign language alphabet and knows how to use it.
Mrs Peterson mostly keeps the story time in line with what is happening in our community. She said that as parents we often forget that whatever is happening around us, also affects our children. In our busy lives we tend to forget to share and break down important incidents in a language that they understand.
This year has been quite a challenging year for the Police Force and this December Story time would like to Honour and thank our men and women in blue for, in our children’s own words: “Protecting our community.”
Our first session started Saturday November 21st 2015 with a Meet & Greet in the reading room where children got a chance to interact and ask questions and personally thank the Community Officers. The program flyer will be available at the Library front desk early December.
The session ended on a high note where all children pledged to always respect our officers at all time.
The Chief of police Carl John stated that the police force will support any organization and will continue to support any project or program that is in the benefit of the education of our youth.