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Community Corner

Mineola Youth Start Fall Season with Inaugural Apple Festival

Children enjoy day full of apple-related fun at Mineola Library.

Bobbing for apples was one of the few fun activities young children were able to participate in at the Apple Festival on Wednesday at the .

Children’s Librarian Meredith Minkoff coordinated the Apple Festival program for about 16 children between two-and-a-half years old to kindergarten age because she thought it would be great for the fall season.

“It’s the fall season, people like to go apple picking, I tried to think of ideas surrounding the apple,” she said.

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The program began with the children making sweet candy apples, each of them anxiously waiting in line for an apple on a stick and the chance to choose which kind of candy in which it would be coated.

Minkoff had warmed caramel sauce in which to dip the apples, along with a choice of marshmallows, sprinkles, chocolate chips and coconut shavings. Those who wanted to save their apples to eat later were given plastic gift bags in which to bring them home.

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The children next participated in making colorful print apple picking bags with fall colors. Minkoff supplied the kids with apple halves, which were not used for eating but instead used to make apple prints. Paint was applied to the pieces using sponges and in an instant, plain white carrying bags were transformed into bright bags with yellow, green, orange and red apple designs on them.

Next the children had their chance to bob for apples, diving head-first into the tub placed before them filled with water and floating apples. Each of the participants received a temporary tattoo for attempting to nab one of the apples without using their hands.

The final event was an apple toss where the children attempted to throw apples into a basket placed about 2 feet in front of them, being rewarded with a sticker for every apple tossed into the basket.

Although the program was the first Apple Festival held at Mineola Library, it was very successful. John Dinh brought his two daughters and said he will come to the Apple Festival next year if they held it again.

“The parents looked like they had a lot of fun; the kids looked like they had a lot of fun,” Minkoff said, referring to the entire event. “They enjoyed it.”

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