Celebrate Earth Day at Ashe Library!

Earth Day reminds us all of the importance to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.  It is also a good day to celebrate nature with the welcome arrival of spring.  Ashe Library’s Youth Service department has special activities for families and children on Earth Day, April 22, beginning  at 4:00 p.m.

Peggy Bailey, youth service librarian, introduces the first of many “Story Walks.”   A Story Walk is designed to combine physical activity with literacy by transforming the pages of a children’s picture book into signs and spacing them out on a trail.  Julie Fogliano’s And Then It’s Spring will be the featured, in the park behind the library, as Earth Day's Story Walk.  It is beautifully illustrated and teaches patience with the story of a young boy and his dog who decide that they've had enough after a long snow-filled winter.  They are tired of all that brown and resolve to plant a garden. They dig, they plant, they play, they wait . . . and wait . . . until at last, the brown becomes a more hopeful shade of brown, a sign that spring may finally be on its way.      

 

With Mother's Day just around the corner, join us in making personalized cards decorated using stamp designs created from recycled plastic bottles.   Another recycling activity involves planting mini-gardens in egg carton planters.  

At 5:00 p.m. Jo Wohlfeld of the Ashe County Wildcrafters will present a program on growing potatoes above ground in “towers.”  This technique is great because it saves space by getting the crop to grow up rather than sprawling out in the ground.    A tasty treat of “organic fries” will be served to attendees.  

Shoes are also being collected at the library for recycling.  On May 1 at 4:00 p.m. Michael Obacha, an ASU student and college basketball star will be talking about his home in Nigeria.  Michael is collecting gently used athletic shoes to help impoverished children in Nigeria and Keep Ashe Beautiful is also collecting shoes of all kinds for a fundraiser project.