Promoting literacy and physical fitness

For the past several years that I have been teaching, I have been trying to find ways to encourage and promote family literacy. When I came across this idea for Story Walk, I knew I had to do it for the children in my community.

As families hike or walk a trail they read pages of a children's book, thus promoting literacy and physical fitness. I think it's a great idea!

My husband is a Park Ranger so we decided to make the Story Walk a collaboration between my school, Westfield Elementary, and where he works as a Ranger, Pilot Mountain State Park. We held the event on December 21st, 2013 at the park and featured the book, The Gingerbread Bear, by Robert Dennis. It was a big success and we had lots of families come out from numerous elementary schools in our county as well as from other counties.

The first 50 families received a free book and everyone walked away with gingerbread cookies. Families could also do crafts after the hike and make their own gingerbread bears.

Recently, I was asked to coordinate another Story Walk event with the other 10 elementary school media coordinators in my county! This will be a collaborative event and we are all so excited to work on a project together. I work with a wonderful group of Media Coordinators so I can't wait to see the outcome of this next event!

I will keep you posted!

The StoryWalk® Project was created by Anne Ferguson of Montpelier, VT and developed in collaboration with the Vermont Bicycle & Pedestrian Coalition and the Kellogg Hubbard Library.

I would like to give a special thanks to:

Just Save, Scholastic, Team Nutrition and North Surry High School for donating food, books and other materials that made my Story Walk possible.

Comments

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