Children

Story telling hours
In all the Maribor Public Library branches, including the Mobile Library (bibliobus), trained story tellers have regular meetings with children aged from 3 to 10. Story-telling hours for children and adults with special needs are prepared and performed with particular care. They take place once a month in the Children's Ward of the Maribor General Hospital, at the Residence for Children with Special Needs and at the School for Children with Special Needs (in co-operation with the School's experts).

"Toyteque" – (toy borrowing)
In one of the Maribor Public Library branches, children under the age of 15 can borrow not only books, but also toys. Librarians who work in the toyteque are specially trained; they are familiar with new trends and carefully select toys and social games that help develop children's cognitive, emotional and psychological abilities, while also encouraging their creativity, imagination, concentration, logical thinking, persistence and accuracy.
Borrowing toys from the toyteque collection is free of charge for all children who are library members. The toyteque also welcomes children and their parents from more remote municipalities. It houses collections of toys that can also be used by various institutions and by children with special needs, including those with functional or intellectual disabilities.
It is important to emphasize that together with a toy, an appropriate book is always recommended to young visitors. The share of toys borrowed by students, teachers and educators has also increased. This is a clear sign that experts working in the field of education have become aware of the importance of using this type of library material.
Our collection contains carefully selected, well-maintained and attractively presented toys and games. Besides our library, toys can be borrowed in only one other public library in Slovenia, in Ljubljana, the country's capital.

Computer creativity workshops for children under 15
The computer litteracy programme for groups of children is based on modern library information science and co-operation between school libraries and public libraries. In such workshops children become familiar with the library material, electronic information, the dimensions and importance of the world wide web, the ways of finding information on a specific topic, which is at the same time the theme of a workshop (for example the Universe). The starting point is the Maribor Public Library home page. At the end of the workshop, children try to collect information about a certain topic via the Library home page. The workshop programme depends on the age of children in each group.

Reading badge is a Slovenian movement which has been encouraging children and teenagers to read for more than 45 years. The principal aim of this movement is to develop reading skills, and to stimulate the cultivation of reading and literary culture among children and the young.
Experts on juvenile literature and literary didactic, librarians who work with children and teenagers in public and school libraries, Center for Juvenile Literature and Librarianship of Ljubljana City Library in Ljubljana, the Slovene IBBY section (International Board on Books for Young People), Slovene Reading Association, Slovene Writers΄ Association, the magazine Otrok in knjiga (»A child and a book«), publishing houses, bookshops etc. take part in this movement. Within the framework of the Reading Badge and several other reading projects which encourage reading (Bookpupas, Reading knapsack), the librarians of the Maribor Public Library work with children groups from kindergardens and schools. They tell them tales all year long and enrich their literary choice. At the end of the season, when all projects have come to an end, there is an award ceremony at the library, at which children, their parents, relatives, mentors and teachers take part. Sometimes our story-tellers also visit their young public in the kindergarden or at school.