Chartiers-Houston library hosts holiday event

The Chartiers-Houston Community Library is hosting a “Holidays Around the World” event next week.
The outdoor event at 5 p.m. Dec. 10 will allow families to visit stations and pick up educational materials that highlight different holiday celebrations in December, like Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa and Omisoka.
“Our thought was we’ll have to do a different kind of holiday event this year,” said Laura Swanson, the library manager. “We were impressed with the WQED shows that talked about different holidays.”
The event was initially going to be held indoors, but with the rapidly increasing number of COVID-19 cases in our region, Swanson said it will likely need to be held outside or as a curbside pickup program. Families will be able to pick up materials, crafts and books that teach children about holiday celebrations around the world.
In years past, they’ve had pictures with Santa and Star Wars holiday parties, but this holiday season is much different.
“I’m missing that,” Swanson said. “It’s a little sad, but that’s another reason why we’re thrilled to have WQED support us in this way, and find different ways to send celebrations home with folks.”
This program is the library’s debut with WQED’s Inquire Within program, which is a partnership with local libraries to provide educational experiences and programming to children. It’s financially supported by Gateway Health Plan. Inquire Within launched in 2016, and now has about 40 libraries participating across the region. Chartiers-Houston is the newest library to participate, according to the news release from WQED.
Swanson said they started with Inquire Within last month, but so far they’ve been helpful in navigating alternative learning amid a pandemic. She said the program is supportive of changing in-person, hands-on experiences to take-home, outdoor or online programs.
“They’re very supportive of each library doing their own thing that makes the library unique in serving their own community,” she said.
The ever changing circumstances and uncertainty surrounding the pandemic has made it difficult to plan these types of engaging programs, she said.
“It is definitely a challenge,” Swanson said. “The main thing we’ve tried to do is keep in mind what our main goal with those programs is. There are many different ways to learn, whether that’s inside or outside the library. As long as we’re still able to get it to folks, we’re happy with that.”