Adults from the community participate in a cookie exchange in the Sun Room at holiday activity night on Thursday, Dec. 12 at the Hutchinson Public Library. The cookie exchange was hosted as a separate event last year CREDIT EMMIE BOESE
By Emmie Boese
The Hutchinson Public Library staff caught the “holiday bug,” and hosted a holiday activity night for the community on Thursday night.
Activities were available for all ages, including ornament making, a life-size candy land game for youth, a viewing of the movie “Gremlins,” a hot cocoa bar and popcorn, a cookie swap and spice kits.
Adult Program Coordinator Katie Broker planned the adult activities for the event, but she said that planning was an overall collaborative effort.
“We did it last year,” Broker said. “It was a lot of fun. Our activities were a little different. We had a bookmark craft, and we did an ugly sweater-making contest. The exchange was actually held separately last year, but we decided to make it all one night of holiday activities right before Christmas.”
Broker said that the library decided to host a holiday activity night again this year because of the staff’s passion for providing for the community.
“It’s completely free,” Broker said. “You can come to the library, which is kind of our community hub anyway, and watch movies. There are activities for kids and activities for adults, and we really really want people to experience that without any cost-prohibitive barriers or anything like that. Plus, we just had a blast making a hot cocoa bar, baking cookies, and making something really cool.”
Broker said that in addition to helping plan the holiday night, her other favorite events include the pocket painting, in which patrons paint on miniature canvasses, and the art talk event with Hutchinson Community College.
“Students in Art History come here, and they do a talk for maybe about 30 minutes where they talk about creative art, and then we do an art project with anyone who attends,” Broker said. “And so we’ve done sculpting, we did a community painting with handprints, we painted on papyrus paper — kind of like what ancient Egypt would have done — and we are starting that back up again in the spring, so I’m really looking forward to seeing what the students do.”
Broker said the activity night is the library’s main event for the holidays.
“Life-size Candy Land in Youth Services will be all month and then maybe some smaller gatherings as well,” Broker said. We are doing holiday-themed book clubs. I know Salt City Readers is doing an ugly sweater contest and playing some holiday-themed games, so there may be some little pockets of activity leading up to Christmas, but this is the main one.”
A full calendar of events for the Hutchinson Public Library is available at hutchpl.org.
Goldi / December 13, 2024
It’s great to see the library staff enthusiastically bringing so many fun and accessible events to our community! Their efforts have really increased over the years that we have lived in Hutchinson, and that so many are free or very low cost allows all of us to enjoy both the activities and the positive interactions with our fellow citizens. Big thank you to our library staff, and to the Tribune for letting people know about it!
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