By EMILY BEHLMANN

Pierceville Library (Video)

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ebehlmann@gctelegram.com

"Jet" and "jackrabbit" both start with J, so they were to go on the collage Jake Underwood, 3, was making, with some help from his mom, Brandi, Thursday at the Pierceville-Plymell Elementary School library.

But it wasn't the jets or the jackrabbits that made him choose J as his favorite letter.

"J for Jake," he said, looking up at his brother, 5-year-old Austin Underwood, who had picked S because of Star Wars, spaghetti and stars.

Austin was a veteran to the elementary school's library, having gone there as a kindergartner in the past school year.

However, Brandi Underwood said she was glad a Thursday afternoon summer library program was allowing Jake, too, to take part in art and reading activities there. It gave him a chance to look at and check out books, make friends, and get an idea of what a school environment is like before he starts pre-school in the fall, she said.

That's part of Kerma Crouse's logic for operating the program, which concludes on Thursday. It gives children like the five who will enter kindergarten in the fall an opportunity to see part of the school, check out books, learn how to work with clay or glue, and meet one of their teachers, said Crouse, Pierceville-Plymell's librarian and art teacher.

"They get a little taste of it with their mommas there," she said.

The program is open to Pierceville-Plymell students and also those who live outside the school's boundaries, like the out-of-town children who attended one session with their grandmother, who lives close to the school, Crouse said. Last week, there were 27 participants.

She said that having the library open could help make Pierceville-Plymell into more of a "community school" -- something that's hard to achieve since its boundaries extend into most southern areas of Finney County instead of just covering a single neighborhood.

It also benefits children by encouraging them to read over the summer, which can help prevent them from losing some of the knowledge and skills they build during school, Crouse said. Each week, she reads a couple books to the group, and they can check out regular library books or selections from Books on the Bus (B.O.B.), the school district's summer bookmobile.

The books Crouse reads have a corresponding art activity for participants to complete. For instance, letter-based collages were paired with reading "Dr. Seuss's ABC" and "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom," a story by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault about an alphabet's worth of letters that climb a coconut tree.

Crouse said she likes combining books and art during the regular school year, but curricular limitations don't always give her the freedom to do the projects she would like.

"With this, I'm really free to just play," she said.