Kids Blog

Grab your Wellington City Libraries card and head on over to our eLibrary to download free audiobooks for the holidays. If it’s your first time you will have to download some software, then you can dive into our children’s collection.

You can now download ebooks for free with your library card too!

You can use your Wellington City Library card to download audiobooks for free. You can play them on your MP3 player or iPod®, some you can even burn to CD to listen to later.

All you have to do is go to our digital audiobooks page , download the Overdrive software, and that’s it. You can start searching the children’s fiction collection for the books you want to listen to these school holidays.

How cool is that!

On Thursday 15th June, around 40 children came to Tawa to hear stories read by a Witch Fairy and by Little Red Riding Hood. Everyone had lots of fun playing games related to fairytales.

Johnsonville Library was full of magic on Wednesday as wizards, fairies, knights and some animals filled the library and our enchanted castle. We enjoyed fantastic holiday activities, with stories, puzzles, pin the glasses on Harry Potter and even a giant board game. We hope you enjoy looking at the photos.

We had some creative holiday activities with a fun Storython. Children spun a special story wheel and wrote and illustrated their own fantastic short stories. Everyone did a great job and had a lovely time.

Here are two of the stories written:

Story 1:

Sharks belong in the ocean – not in the middle of the desert. It’s during the time of the dinosaurs and all the sharks in the desert were sleeping and a big Tyrannosaurus Rex was going to eat them but the sharks had magic powers and flew away from the dinosaurs and escaped to NZ. Where they lived in the ocean in NZ and ate a snorkeler!

Story 2:

If this was just an ordinary old lady – why did she have a broomstick – she had a broomstick because she was a witch who flew around everywhere – casting her spells, her very bad spells which turned children into toads when they were sleeping. She turned the adults into sausages and the toads began to eat the sausages. A hunter came from the bear’s house to kill the witch. Then everyone turned back to normal adults and children.

Johnsonville Library had its Mad Hatter Holiday Programme on April 15. It was a madcapped, fun filled hour with stories, searching for the puzzle pieces and finally an exciting treasure hunt in the library. We had lots of fun with our crazy hats and activities!

The White Rabbit, Alice and The Mad Hatter

Many children gathered for Tawa’s Mad Hatter Tea Party holiday programme. They had great fun watching Alice have tea with The Mad Hatter and The White Rabbit, before they went on a treasure hunt for objects from Alice in Wonderland that were hidden around Tawa Library.

Alice and The Mad Hatter pose for photos after the tea party.

Karori Library had heaps of fun this afternoon with some creative holiday activities based on the theme Seen the Movie?  Read the Book!  Kids made and decorated their own story cubes and enjoyed a special storytelling session.  A big thank you to everyone who came along and participated.

For more information about holiday activities and events at other branches check out the whats on page.

Don’t panic! The library is a good place for homework stuff. We can even help you from the comfort of your own home.

1) Any Questions? If you’re stuck at home and you want librarian help then AnyQuestions is the place for you! Get some great advice on how to find the answers to your homework questions. Also, if a librarian isn’t available there’s ManyAnswers, a database of , well, many answers from how to make candyfloss to what is global warming (and are the two connected??)?

2) Kids Cat. The Wellington City Libraries Kids’ Catalogue has a whole heap of subjects you can browse. Just hit the “Explore” button for topics like Languages, Geography, Human Body and much more.

3) MyGateway. The library has several ENORMOUS online databases that you can access to help you with your assignments and things. Go to our students page for general encyclopedias and tools. One really cool database we have is the Times Digital Archive. Here you can see actual Times newspapers from 19th Century Britain. For example (because librarians are such ghoulish people) I found an article from 1891 about Jack the Ripper. Once you’ve found a cool article that you want to use for your project you can print it out and it looks like an old-fashioned newspaper. Articles go back as far as 1785! You need to enter your library card number and last name to use these.

4) Homework and study hints. Our Homework Help page has tips on how to make your schoolwork easier.

Hey guys! Look at this cool library. This town of about 800 people had a mobile library that used to come to them, when it stopped they solved their own problem…..have a look at how cool it is!