A spring fling with Park Hop, Storyventures and Arts Alive

With summer slowly approaching the calendar is filling up! A few of our favorites include a new program at the Greenville Library, Storyventures, and the LiveWell Park Hop, an annual summer-long event with LiveWell, all the parks and recreation departments in Greenville county, plus Paris Mountain State Park. The opening celebration was Saturday in Conestee Park, and despite the gloomy weather we headed out to play games and compete in the scavenger hunt. The new Park Hop passport was unveiled, and this year’s clues can be found spread wide over Greenville County, from Paris Mountain State Park to the Greenville Drive and Children’s Museum. Designed to help participants discover parks within the community as well as stay active through physical activity, we found it last year to give us motivation to visit areas we might not otherwise have seen, such as Cedar Falls Park. To register and download your copy of the park passport, visit the LiveWell Greenville website. 

Storyventures is a new program at the Hughes Main Library, and we signed up for the April program featuring the senses. Based on the Reggio Emilia learning philosophy, the hour-long program is geared towards children age three to five and takes place every Friday over the course of a month. During April we explored the senses, discovering the color green, texture, smell and light. Mikus tagged along, even participating in storytime and some of the activities. I had the opportunity to learn techniques for guiding and documenting the boys’ explorations and discoveries, and we are looking forward to the program restarting in October. For more information and registration, please contact the Hughes Main Library.

We will be participating in the summer reading “Explore Your World” program as well, which kicks off Friday, May 30^th at the Main Library with children’s activities, a children’s book sale and Lollipops concert. Starting that Friday you will be able to register at the library location you visit most frequently to pick up a reading log. The program runs through July 26^th and more information can be found on the Greenville Library website.

A few weeks ago we headed out to Stone Academy for the annual fundraiser, Arts Alive. Organized by the PTA, it featured dozens of games and activities for children of all ages, food, live music, auctions of artwork created by the students, and a raffle which this year included prizes such as a diamond necklace and a restaurant dining package worth over $1,000. Although we didn’t luck out in the drawing we had a great time, filling up on snowcones, popcorn, M&Ms, hot dogs and iced coffee.

Even with all the programs and festivals taking place, we have a few projects going on at home. Plus, the 2014 International Ice Hockey Federation World Championship is taking place in Belarus. Coming through with a big win against the US last week in the preliminaries, the Latvian team is once again surprising the world with their excellent defense and teamwork. Back to back games Monday and Tuesday landed them just outside of the quarterfinals, but I know we’ll be seeing more of phenomenal goalkeepers Gudlevskis and Masalskis, as well as legends Daugaviņš and Girgensons.

source here

Enough to stay busy for a while, don’t you think? Greenville has an amazing list of programs for kids this summer, and if you are looking for fun activities to participate in I hope you'll join in! 

PS I wrote about last year's Park Hop and summer reading program here.