With the weather constantly fluctuating in the QC over the last couple of weeks our family decided to take full advantage of the vitamin D! While searching for a new trail or biking path, I looked on my good friend Lauren Sawyers’ website blazeclt.com (If you haven’t checked it out do it now! I promise you will not be disappointed. She has endless ideas for outside activities and adventures!). There I found the perfect activity for a Sunday afternoon: The StoryWalk in Independence Park.
This brilliant collaboration between Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation and Read Charlotte combines a love a reading and the outdoors. A children’s book is displayed page-by-page on laminated posts along the paved walking path that surrounds the playground. My girls had a blast running from post to post! Each page is followed with comprehension questions, which was an amazingly, sneaky way to get in some reading practice with my big girl who isn’t very interested in reading (which is very hard for this bookworm of a Momma to understand, but that’s a whole other story).
The book on display now is Colors of Us by Karen Katz. What a beautiful book. You follow along with Lena as she searches for the color that truly represents her skin. After meeting her friends and neighbors the audience sees that there are lots of different shades of brown and that we are not all the same. The author uses spices and flavors to describe the differences in color. This story and it’s beautiful illustrations teach us that we all come in different colors, and even though we may look different we are all the same inside.
After you get your reading in let your little Smarties play on the newly renovated playground, kick a soccer ball around or just bask in the sun. Independence Park is located right in the heart of Elizabeth, so you have tons of lunch options as well as breweries. I’d say it was a win-win for all those involved!
So next time you see the sun peek out head over to one of the following parks that has a StoryWalk!
Independence Park
300 Hawthorne Lane
Serversville Park
530 Bruns Avenue
Grier Heights Park
3110 Leroy St
1 comment
This is ADORBS!!