BRYANT: Story time with a twist at library

Celebration of Earth Day marked by planting flowers

By Philip Seaton

Three-year-old Riley Gilmore of Benton, right, holds up her potted plant as her twin sister, Reagan, smells a flower with the help of her mother, Tammy. The girls were at the Bryant Library on Tuesday for a storytelling program that featured an Earth Day event and the reading of three books. Philip Seaton

LITTLE ROCK — Debbie Bowers wanted to do something different for this story time.

With Earth Day being celebrated in the northern hemisphere on Tuesday, Bowers, the children’s librarian at the Bryant Library, took her preschool group outside.

After she read them three books - The Cleanup Surprise by Christine Loomis, And If The Moon Could Talk by Kate Banks and All The Colors Of The Earth by Sheila Hamanaka - and explained the basic concept of Earth Day, it was time to dig in the dirt for the youngsters.

“Being outside in the dirt really clicked with them,” she said. “They listened and did real well.”

Out on the patio of the facility on Prickett Road, it wasn’t quite a tree that was planted, but instead a potted flower.

“This is a small way to get them to interact with the earth,” she said. “This was the first time we had done anything on the patio. We just moved it out here.”

After the 15-minute story time, it took the children less than 30 minutes to complete the task of putting the flower into their own take-home pots.

“We had to come outside especially on Earth Day,” Bowers said. “The weather was perfect.”

The Bryant Library, part of the Saline County Library system, has story time three times a week at the library.

At 10:30 a.m. Monday, a lap-sitting reading is held for children ages 6 to 18 months; a program for children 18 months to 3 years old follows at 11 a.m.

On Tuesday a preschool story time starts at 10:30 a.m., and Tuesday night there is a family storytelling time for all ages that begins at 6:30 p.m. All of the story-time events are free.

For more information about the programs at the Bryant Library, call (501) 847-2166 or for storytelling programs in Benton call (501) 778-4766.

Tri-Lakes, Pages 65 on 04/24/2008