Soyoung Lee, children and youth service librarian at the Belleville Public Library has organized the TV Turnoff week of children and teenagers.Lee wants these young people to go without TV and other media from March 31 to April 4.
Photo by Kerith Nicholl
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Turn off and get active
by Kerith Nicholl
The Belleville Public Library invites kids of all ages to switch off the television and take part in a few different activities during TV Turnoff week.
The week, from March 31 to April 4, is intended to get families away from the television, the computer and video games, and get them involved in more wholesome things. It's designed to be an after school program.
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TV Turnoff week is promoted by the Life Works School Working Group,
which is made up of members from the Hastings and Prince Edward Counties Health Unit, the Hastings and Prince Edward District School Board and the Algonquin and Lakeshore Catholic District School Board. Life Works promotes three key messages in local schools: be active, eat healthy and be smoke-free.
This is not the first time the Belleville Public Library has done something for TV Turnoff week.
"We've been doing TV Turnoff week for a couple of years now," said Soyoung Lee, a Children's and Youth services Librarian.
A highlight this year will be a presentation by Kingston-based Betsy Cotton, known as the "Dinosaur Lady." She will be at the library on March 31 to present What happened to the Dinosaurs? Cotton will lead children who attend on a detective hunt to try to find out why the dinosaurs disappeared from the earth. This is the only activity of the TV Turnoff week that has an age limit (six to 10 years old) and requires pre-registration.
"Once people sign up for the March Break programs, they also signed up for this TV Turnoff week program and we have about 20 people already signed up," Lee said.
Other programs include Bingo night on April 1, Origami on April 2 where kids will learn how to make various animals out of special Origami paper from Korea, and a Pajama Story-time night on April 3. All of these programs are scheduled to run from 6:30 p.m. until 7:30 p.m. and are for all ages. Some evenings will have different activities for different age groups. The Origami program is one of these, because it can be very difficult to do.
"We are going to make it a little easier for the younger children and a little harder for the older children," said Lee.
TV Turnoff week was organized in January, which is around the same time the March Break and Spring Reading programs were organized.
As far as expectations go for this year’s TV Turnoff week, Lee is hopeful that the turnout will be as good as it was for their March Break program activities.
"We had a big success with our March Break program - a lot better than we had expected, so I'm hoping we have a big turnout for the TV Turnoff week," said Lee.
For more information on TV turnoff week and the programs that are being offered visit www.bellevillelibrary.com.
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