Evanston parents can breathe a sigh of relief as there is now a place to put all of their children’s old LEGOs.
The Evanston Public Library is taking donations to start a new LEGO Club. The club will be a recurring meeting of children who want to play with LEGOs and learn at the same time. The target age group of the club is children ages four to 13, and the groups will be divided according to age, said Gigi Galich, the organizer of the club. Each meeting will have a theme and a literary component in conjunction with summer reading material, she said.
“It is about creativity and play and developing early literacy skills,” she said. “It allows them to build stories and maintain focus.”
The theme of the first meeting will reflect that of the library’s summer reading game titled “Take Flight,” so club members will do activities with the LEGOs that have to do with flying, Galich said.
Galich, one of the library’s children services employees, said she plans on starting the club in the summer. It may start in June, but there is a possibility that it may be pushed to July, as the Evanston Public Library has a lot of events going on in June, she said.
But before any LEGO Club meeting can take place, the library needs LEGOs. The library has received some donations already, she said.
“People have been really generous,” Galich said.
Galich said she is discouraging children from bringing in their own LEGO kits, because there is a chance that the LEGOs in the kit will get switched around with those already in the library’s collection.
LEGO enthusiasts may volunteer and help with the LEGO club, but Galich said she is setting up a strict perimeter. The number of volunteers will be limited, as Galich said she wants the children to have the freedom to play as they want to.
“They have to be familiar with kids and how kids play,” she said.
