CPL hosts Haunted Story Walk to celebrate Halloween

By Rob Paul

Story walks have become one of Caledon Public Libraries' (CPL) most popular events for children throughout the pandemic.

They've been a way to get kids out of the house in a safe manner while simultaneously keeping them active and reading.

To get kids in Caledon in the Halloween spirit and excited to read, CPL hosted a “Haunted Story Walk” at Edelweiss Park on Thursday, October 28, encouraging attendees to don their costumes for an outdoor interactive experience.

The walk was set up for four time slots of groupings over four hours to get the greatest number of kids able to attend the event as possible while still ensuring for space given the circumstances of the pandemic. 

Once there, kids (and parents) were led through the Haunted Story Walk by CPL Youth Services Coordinator Leo Scardicchio.

Scardicchio would help the kids read “We're Going on a Monster Hunt” while guiding them through the physical aspect of the walk—parents were just as involved in the activities as the kids.

The story walk isn't new to CPL but making the story their own to fit the theme of the walk was and Laurie Groe, Manager of Youth Services at CPL, says that was her team wanted to make it a more unique experience.

“It was really a credit to my team; they came up with the idea and it was their fabulously creativity the led to the idea to come up with an activity to do that corresponds with each page of the story,” Groe said. “We've been doing the story walks because we're able to do them outdoors and they've really been our only in-person events that we've held with COVID. Then we thought what better time than to do something for Halloween. It gets tricky to do stuff outside this time of the year with the weather and it's a chilly night, but it's still been great.”

The idea of the story walk is to get kids engaged in reading by incorporating more than just words, and a lot of the time it's a good way to get kids reading who don't necessarily gravitate to it.

“It's a live story walk and it's self-directed,” Groe said. “The kids go through different stations with activities, and they don't even realize they're reading.”

“Each page of the story is associated with a station,” Scardicchio said. “We rejigged the story from We're Going on a Bear Hunt to We're Going on a Monster Hunt to give it that Halloween theme. Each station is about a different Halloween thing and includes an interactive activity. 

“We have a spider station where we jump on spiders, a scary pumpkin station, a ghost station, a hay bale station where you climb over skeletons, and a cave that you climb through. They find the monster on the last page of the book and then they get to make monster slime. The Town of Caledon also has a table for kids to do other activities.”

Creating their own version of the story is what made this story walk a little more different and a little more special, especially because it had the theme of Halloween hovering over it to get the kids participating even more immersed in the event.  

“We like to call it an active story walk,” Scardicchio said. “After doing a few story walks, we had the idea to create our own story and pair it with some nice Halloween activities. It gives them a little bit of everything with reading, interactions, and physical play.” 

Despite the temperature, the Haunted Story Walk had a consistent turnout throughout the four hours and included plenty of spooky outfits.

“Pretty much everyone is even showing up in costume, too, and it's turned out really well,” Scardicchio said. “We had booked it to have a maximum of 25 kids per time slot and it's seen a lot of traffic.”

Though the story walks came together due to the pandemic's impact on in-person events led by CPL, they've seen a lot of success despite the circumstances and will continue.

“The story walk has been big for us,” said Groe. “We had done a couple in the spring and summer, and we thought it would be good to do another. It was all the right elements with it being outdoors on a nice fall night before Halloween.”

For more information on upcoming CPL events, visit engagedpatrons.org/EventsCalendar.cfm?SiteID=8142.