For the past ten weeks Bookmans has opened its doors to all the Phoenix kids who are on summer vacation for our summer kids events series and we've both have had an amazing time crafting, singing, learning, and exploring the world around us. To give summer one last goodbye, we ended the fun with a back-to-school party. Our community room was decorated to look like a classroom carnival with candy colored balloons everywhere, a lunch time snack station which included some of our favorite lunchbox treats and small cafeteria set up where kids could enjoy their food and drink.

Everyone in attendance received a raffle ticket and entered to win some cool coolest back to school supplies like Star Wars notebooks, Barbie folders, lunch boxes, pencil boxes and new sets of crayons and colored pencils. We had enough prizes for over 40 kids to go home with a little something. After our faux lunch time, the kids grabbed their paper Bookmans bags and we walked through how to make book covers out of them. The covers we made were removable and adjustable so that the kids could fit them perfectly to whichever school books they’ll be receiving next week.

In addition to the book covers that they decorated, each one also received a brand new spiral notebook that they got to decorate with stickers and markers. Before everyone left with their treats and school supplies in hand, we talked out what grade everyone was going to and what their new teacher’s names were going to be. Check out the great pictures from today's event on our Flickr page.

Each week I’ve had the privilege of entertaining a large group of the Valley's kids and now that I won’t be seeing them every week, I’m a little sad but still very excited for all the new opportunities that are ahead of them. Everyone promised to write down some of the exciting things that will happen in their new school year and share them with me next summer when they come back to Bookmans for another ten weeks of fantastically fun events! We also talked about some of our favorite of the kids events which included the Phoenix Zoo and The Arizona Puppet theatre. Our biggest thank you goes out to our kid customers and their parents for committing to get them off the couch this summer and get them involved in community activities.