Whoever wrote that boys are made of snails and girls are made of sugar and spice didn’t know four-year-old Ava McConnell, who had no problem letting a snail sit on the tip of her finger for closer inspection.
With spiders, however, things might have turned out differently for them.
Still, Ava joined dozens of other young children as they searched Sankey Park on August 9 to find out what kinds of insects are there. It was an event hosted by the Sweet Home Public Library as part of its weekly summer reading program. But what do insects have to do with libraries?
“It’s learning, right?” replied program librarian Kira Mikutaitis. “Everything is learning and we want to encourage this lifelong learning in children, the idea that you can learn in the park. You can also learn in the library, you can learn wherever you are.”
Mikutaitis coordinates each of the projects that take place every Friday in the park during the summer. This year, she has loosely based the reading program on recycling, with the occasional water fight planned.
“We try to make it fun and educational, something exciting,” she said.
While the program may not necessarily be “educationally valuable,” another aspect is to bring the children together and create a community, she added.
“It’s a great way for them to interact with kids their own age, but also with kids younger and older,” Mikutaitis said. “It gives them kind of that sense of community that the library tries to foster.”
On the day, the children were tasked with finding a list of insects, including butterflies, ladybirds, spiders and oryx. They also filled small jars with soil and twigs to create homes for the insects they found. However, Mikutaitis encouraged the children to return the insects to the park before they left.
The children also identified some bugs that weren’t on the list, including a grasshopper, earwigs and a snail. Six-year-old Kenzlee Brown said the best part of the day was “catching the grasshopper,” a big guy that couldn’t jump away fast enough when it caught its prey.
Jayden Meadows (right) instructs “Z” (left) to look for bugs under a rock while his dog Willow distracts himself with the photographer.
From left: Alina McConnell, 6, Acelynn, 6, Ava McConnell, 4, and Hope McConnell look at a small snail they found in the creek.
Alina McConnell, 6, and Ava McConnell, 4, find a lot of bugs under a large rock that Hope McConnell lifted.
