Last week, a fun Story Walk popped up at Spirit Square, courtesy the Lakes Literacy’s Literacy Outreach Coordinator in Burns Lake, Jennifer Petersen.
“This is just a new program I am starting up actually, it is pretty exciting because it incorporates some physical literacy,” said Petersen.
Petersen put up several laminated boards with story pages and fun prompts like “Walk like a duck to the next page” or “Hop like a bunny to the next page” and propped them up along the walking track at Spirit Square.
“So a story walk is a book of which you pull the pages apart, you put the pages on a separate sheet and you distance them apart. So it gets children and families moving so it does have an element of physical activity and it is also Covid friendly you can say,” said Petersen.
Petersen is hoping to put up more such story walks for kids at Spirit Square and make it into a regular feature.
“It is outdoors, the pages are spaced apart, and then they walk around and read the stories. So they will read a page, and there will be a little prompt at the bottom saying bounce like a kangaroo to the next page or pretend to paddle a canoe to the next page; so just these fun little prompts at the bottom for some fun and gross motor skills of getting to the next page. They will do that and go to the next page and do a little loop and get to enjoy a story while being outdoors,” she said.
Petersen came across the idea for a Story Walk at a conference she attended for literacy organizations. There she discovered that similar story walks happen within the different communities in B.C. Petersen decided to bring this idea to Burns Lake but being a non-profit, cost of the project held her back until she decided to just go for it and have a project to show before she started fundraising for it.
Petersen has big plans with the pop-up and hopes to also have an adult story walk at some point with either poetry or history of Burns Lake or something else. She is also looking to bring the story walk to the LDSS walking track at some point.
“Usually our community has a lot going on for families and children especially that 0-5 range. Due to Covid, a lot of the programs that were running aren’t running right now so I just feel this will be an opportunity for families to go outside and do something like that, connect with other moms,” she said.
Priyanka Ketkar
Multimedia journalist
@PriyankaKetkar
priyanka.ketkar@ldnews.net
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