Creek Week conclude: Learning about water through activities, storytime
Published 12:09 am Tuesday, September 24, 2024
Thomasville Fire Department brought an antique fire truck to the Yadkin River Park for the Creek Week finale, which spanned both the Rowan and the Davidson sides of the park. Photo by Elisabeth Strillacci
Food, information and town booths were up on the Spencer/Rowan side of the Yadkin River Park, here, as well as the Davidson side for visitors to enjoy during the Creek Week Finale. Photo by Elisabeth Strillacci
Dean Cool, 5, talks with Delilah Hatheway of Happy Roots about planting a garden to help the earth during CreekWeek finale in Spencer. Photo by Elisabeth Strillacci
Amanda Decker, one of the library’s storytellers, reads “Water Princess” to the children. Pictured with Decker are some of the children, from left, Merritt Bucy, Harper Bucy, A.J. Fink, Scarlett Albracht and Abel Bucy. – Karen Kistler
Working on their art projects are, from left, Harper Bucy, Abel Bucy, Gerald Fink, A.J. Fink and Silas Everett. – Karen Kistler
Scarlet Albracht, left, and Merritt Bucy work together to clean the trash out of their bin. — Karen Kistler
SALISBURY — A four-part Rowan Creek Week event, aimed at teaching children, kindergarten through fifth graders, about water, was held last week at the Rowan Public Library Headquarters.
Seven children gathered for this event, which began with a time of yoga led by library assistant Duane Deberry. After getting their mats, he shared several rules of yoga – smiles and most importantly he said, “don’t forget to breathe.”
After running them through the different poses, Deberry congratulated them for being willing to try and open to learning.
The group then moved to the storytime room where they listened to Amanda Decker read the book, “Water Princess,” written by fashion model Georgie Badiel. The book, Decker said, is a true story of Badeil’s childhood and her having to walk hours to get water with the other women in her family. The book shares her dream of bringing clean drinking water to her African village.
She grew up and became a model and writer and has established an organization which tackles the issue of having clean water in her West African homeland.
Decker asked questions throughout the reading, challenging them to think about ideas presented in the book and explained that there are also areas in the United States that do not have good clean water and posed the question of what could be done to have good water.
The group then moved where stations were set up for a hands-on activity teaching them how to clean up water. They were given bins and various tools to choose from and instructed to clean trash out of the bins, which were filled with water and items such as paper, dirt, bags and other plastic items and instructed to make the water as clean as possible in a five minute time limit.
When time was called, Decker and Amanda Brill, the young adult librarian, who was assisting in this portion of the program, checked to see who had the most water left in their bins and who had the cleanest water.
The last portion of the event, also centering on the theme of water for Creek Week, was a watercolor art project.
Each was given a piece of aluminum foil where they placed drops of the watercolor paint using whatever colors and in whatever design they wished. They were then given a piece of white paper to place on top and transfer that design onto the paper with each creating their own unique piece of water art, which concluded this Creek Week experience.
Creek Week culminates in Spencer
The culmination of the sixth annual Creek Week was hosted by the town of Spencer, with much of the finale taking place at the Wil-Cox Bridge/Yadkin River Park.
