Lakes Literacy’s Literacy Outreach Coordinator in Burns Lake, Jennifer Petersen, received a grant funding from the Bulkley Valley Credit Union’s Burns Lake branch to continue the story walks.
“I applied for some funding through the Credit Union and received $2,000 from that,” said Petersen.
The story walks that were started by Peterson back in October, have turned out to be a successful draw for kids, families and even seniors.
A story walk is when you pull the pages apart of a book and put the pages on a separate sheet and you distance them apart. Not just that, each of Petersen’s book pages have a small prompt on the bottom for example, 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 or walk like a penguin to the next page. Kids don’t just end up socially distancing, but also read while being outdoors and being physically active.
Petersen came across the idea for a Story Walk at a conference she attended for literacy organizations. There she discovered that similar story walks happened within several different communities in B.C. She then 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.
After her first successful story walk at Spirit Square, Petersen moved the location to the walking track, which is in close proximity to the school as well as several daycares.
“It has been going very well. I have had emails from people, messages just to say how much they are enjoying it. And it’s funny because a lot of those messages are from the senior population,” said Petersen adding that the walking track location works out well.
She has been putting up different stories right from changing up and putting a story for Halloween to now having a winter-themed story for the season.
“It is so encouraging for me. I will be creating some kits for story walks this winter and I am hoping the library will be able to keep them and rent them out,” she said.
Priyanka Ketkar
Multimedia journalist
@PriyankaKetkar
priyanka.ketkar@ldnews.net
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