Warrior Kids Health and Wellness Initiative

The Texas A&M University-Central Texas University Library routinely offers programs for 86 and young 88 in support of our local community. Two of the most valuable of these are a summer reading enrichment program and a summer STEM program. The first, a four week summer reading enrichment camp, targets local second and third graders who are reading below grade level, and provides them with a challenging, fun environment to improve reading skills and confidence over the summer. This year, we would like to make health and wellness the theme of the program, because we believe that learning to read and enjoy nonfiction can help impact both reading and science-related learning. The second, a STEM camp, will focus on teaching 4th and 5th graders about the scientific method, scientific inquiry, and scientific research. This is a two week, full-day program, and this year we would like to focus part of it on health- and biology-related topics. We are asking for funds to purchase related library collections and information resources, to acquire supplies and equipment in support of hands-on activities, to hire two students for the summer who will help design and run the health-related curriculum, and indirect costs. Notably, once this content is developed, we will continue to use it in future years for this and other programs. We will also turn some of the curriculum into smaller one-to-two hour programs that target health topics, which will be available to our local ISDs and public libraries for field trips to our campus, or on-site visits from our librarians. Once we have the items, we will reuse them to reach out to as many groups in our community as possible. We would also plan to develop instructions for the NNLM so that other libraries could replicate our efforts, and especially academic libraries.