Our Holiday Library Tradition

   Like in most families, the younger members of ours have two weeks off from school this year. This presents the usual problem of “what should we do?”

 While it’s a relief to be away from the hustle and bustle of school and sports and classes…all of which are on hiatus too, it’s too easy find kids and other family members bored after the frenzy of the holidays and looking for something to do.

 Our solution this year was to head to the library in advance of the season. In this economic downturn, though we are avid bibliophiles and media consumers, we’ve found we’ve had to wean ourselves from our Blockbuster/Barnes and Noble/Best Buy habit and have been delighted to discover the benefits of our local library.

 This week we made a pre-holiday visit and returned home with books, videos and audio tapes for the whole family. I like to leave them lying around in odd places to inspire everyone to skip the mindless TV shows, video games and computer and …umm  read or watch an educational DVD or listen to a great audio book.

 

Unless you are a regular library goer, you may not know about the treasures that await.  First, in  most media sections you’ll find lots of movies that you can’t find at Blockbuster/Netflix. These are terrific science, history and how-to movies. Some like The Magic School Bus series you might know, but others are really fun educational kid movies from DK, National Geographic and others. We learn and enjoy. Libraries also tend to have lots of old movies that are long gone from your local video store…the ones you enjoyed as kids.

 We also like to check out audio books. Lots of classics are available on tape or CD – great for listening when actually reading it would be a bit beyond your child.

 Finally, the whole family loves the children’s non-fiction section. This holiday season we checked out cross section books on submarines, castles and famous buildings. We found kid biographies on Eric the Red and Caesar. We found books on making ancient Greek crafts and drawing cars. We picked out some fun and funny books on math.

 Though we probably came home with far too many for the short break…who cares- it’s free or rather, our tax dollars already pay for it!

This is an original LA Moms Blog post.