Kids in Grades 5 to 7 have a new reason to check out the Invermere Public Library, starting today.

On December 7 from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m., the library hosts its first Adventure Club meeting, a two-hour monthly program aimed at bringing older youth to the building.

“We’ve had preschool story time that has run for many years, and then we also for the last year have been offering special events for students from Kindergarten up to Grade 5… but that left the gap,” explains assistant librarian Nicole Pawluk. “We didn’t have anything for the older kids.”

The new drop-in program will be a mix of fun activities and educational pursuits.

Each session will include a half hour where students can get homework help, use the library’s resources to work on school projects “or just have quiet time for reading or catching up on school work,” Pawluk says.

“The other hour and a half of the program, we want it to be fun activities, but still learning-type activities. We see one month maybe being about words, and we’d play word games like Scrabble and Boggle and do crossword puzzles. And another month maybe having a numbers month, where we’d play crib and suduko and those kind of number games.”

Pawluk says librarians have worked to create a program that will include fun activities, but also challenge 10, 11 and 12 year-olds in a way programming for younger children wouldn’t.

She also hopes the Adventure Club’s members will come up with some of their own ideas for the program, and is planning to sit down with attendees at the first session to brainstorm future activities.

“As they get older the programming can get more self-directed, in the sense that we’ll take their ideas and run with it and try to make the program suit them.”

The first afternoon will focus on Christmas crafting, with several types of projects available.

“Sometimes crafting can turn away boys in particular, so we have a craft that involves hammers and nails and soup cans,” she says. “We’re hoping that will appeal to people who  like to be a little more aggressive in their crafting.”

For more information on the Adventure Club, call the library at 250-342-6416.