Teens: Looking for a New After-School Activity? Head to Wilton Library

As your teen gets ready to head back to school in a couple of weeks, they might be looking for some new extracurricular activities to compliment their studies or just blow off some steam after hitting the books hard. While the first place to look might be right at their own school, they should also consider Wilton Library, which is adding two new after-school activities to its roster this fall. 

If your teen is interested in learning how the stock market operates, they'll love The Stock Market Game. Participants will be broken up into teams of two or more and will each be given $100,000 in virtual money to build their portfolio. The teams will compete against each other to see who can get the greatest capital return. 

Assistant teen librarian Tracey Morgan, who will be running the nine-week program for seventh through twelfth graders, told Patch that it's a great way for students to learn about building portfolios, taking risks and diversification.

This is my baby," said the former senior trader of foreign exchange derivatives. The program starts on Sept. 30 and ends on Dec. 2. 

If technology is more up your teen's alley, he or she might be interested in the Robotics Team, which also starts in September. According to Morgan, participants team up to build their own robots and have their creation perform a certain task. The teams then compete on a local, regional and then national level. Wilton Library's Robotic Team will operate under the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC), which includes teams from across the country. 

But if your child tends to gravitate towards reading and the arts, the library's already up-and-running Teen Advisory Board might just be the right fit. The board consists of teen volunteers that advise the library of what books they should purchase and what activities they should provide as well as help out at special events. The board meets for 90 minutes each month. 

As part of its Earth Day celebration this year, board members brought in recyclable items from home, including glue sticks, crayons, coffee cans and trading cards, and worked together to build a sculpture of a hippo. 

"The kids had so much fun doing it and it turned out awesome," Morgan said. "We had two young artists build the base of the hippo out of chicken wire and then we all worked together glue all of our items to newspaper placed on top of the wire." 

For more information about any of these activities, visit the Teen section of the Wilton Library Web site.