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By James Ensor
Hometown Weekly Reporter
Super Awesome Fun Time is a hard name to live up to, yet the event at the Dover Library most certainly does. Hosting over one hundred young children and their parents four times a week, the event is meant to engage babies to toddlers in learning experiences within a social environment.
“It’s a mixture of reading, songs, finger plays, action movements, and then at the end we pull out three sensory bins and crafts,” says Allison Kearney, the Head of Circulation at the Dover Library, who runs the program.
The bins are filled with materials such as water, sand, beads and anything textural that the children can play with to improve their fine motor skills. For the babies and toddlers that attend Super Awesome Fun Time, which has been going on for two and a half years, these lessons prove invaluable.
“Obviously, it’s a lot of fun,” Kearney continues, “but it also teaches fine and gross motor skills as well as early literacy.”
The crowed was not limited to Dover residents, either. Young families attend from across MetroWest. Alex, a young mother from Norwood with twin two-year-old daughters, and a regular at the program, has nothing but good things to say about it.
“My girls love singing along with the songs,” she says as she walks one of her daughters, arms in the air, feet on her feet, across the room.
All throughout the crowded room, parents and their children were enjoying the multitude of activities on offer from the library. Many of them are regulars, “some kids, when they first come, just stare at you, then a couple weeks in they’re up and doing activities with you,” says Kearney.
The program is huge for the Dover library; it occupies practically the entire lower level of the building. For 45 minutes on Mondays and Tuesdays at 4 p.m. and Wednesdays and Fridays at 10:30 a.m., kids can enjoy music, songs, stories, sensory activities, crafts, and an all around good time.
Starting in October, Friday mornings will transition into Super Awesome Baby Time, which will be a period geared towards babies and their learning needs.
