Town Mouse, County Mouse

The Rockbridge Regional Library and Boxerwood Nature Center have teamed up to offer a program called "The Town Mouse and the County Mouse" for elementary-age children.  Youngsters participate in a bi-weekly story hour with nature and craft activities that alternate between the library and Boxerwood. Each session incorporates books and reading with indoor and outdoor activities.

Fall focus: Fairy Folk
Winter focus: Birds
Bird nest identification, Birding adventure and making seed feeders, How do birds use their beaks to eat?  Learn about feathers

The program is free of charge, and no prior registration is required.  For more information, call Glory Knick or Carol Elizabeth Jones at the library at 463-4322 ext. 110 or cejones@rrlib.net. 

Survival Book Club

Survival stories and real survival skills are the focus of a new adventure book club for middle grade children co-sponsored by the Rockbridge Regional Library and Boxerwood Nature Center and Woodland Garden. The Survival Book Club meets at Boxerwood from 3:30 to 5:30 on the first and third Wednesdays of each month.  Participants should be age 10 or older (grades 5 -8) to participate. 

Rockbridge Regional Library staff have compiled a collection of novels that feature young protagonists who find themselves in situations where they must contend with the elements of nature, relying on their inner resources and the resources nature provides in order to stay alive. Book club members read a different novel each month and participate in a fireside discussion led by Glory Knick and Carol Elizabeth Jones from the Regional Library.  The books that have been selected are provided to the participants. 

Following the discussion, club members head outdoors to learn and practice wilderness survival skills taught by Boxerwood educator Hannah Klein and other outdoor experts from the Rockbridge community. Skills include building fires, identifying and preparing edible food in the wild, building shelters, orienteering, crafting tools, tracking, firing clay pots, making herbal remedies and natural dyes, applying first aid, and signaling for communication.  Participants keep a creative journal documenting their survival experiences—literary, real, and imagined. 

Participation in the Survival Book Club is free, but those who wish to participate must register in advance by calling Glory Knick or Carol Elizabeth Jones at (540) 463-4322 ext. 110 or cejones@rrlib.net. 

See a video that a W&L student made about us!

Survival Book Club Schedule
Season Two: January 30-May 17

January 30:  Knot Tying
Book Task:  Bring a paragraph from a book that describes how your survivor character managed to jerry-rig (make or fix) something using only materials on hand.
Survival Task:  Learn how to tie several useful knots, then identify (and tie) the knots you would use in specific survival situations.

February 13:  Distress Signals
Book Task:  Come with a distress message from your survivor that you have practiced tapping out in Morse code. Challenge other club members to decode the message.
Survival Task:  Learn how to send distress signals in an emergency.

February 27:  Collecting Water
Book Task:  Draw a map showing the sources of food and water survivor characters depended on in one of the novels you have read. 
Survival Task:  Learn how to collect, distill, filter and purify water in a survival situation. We’ll build a solar still.

March 12:  Splints and Slings
Book Task:  Bring materials to give a demonstration of how a character in a survival novel you have read treated an injury.
Survival Task:  Learn how to give first aid for injuries that you or a fellow survivor might suffer in an emergency situation. Tend the Medicine Garden we planted in the fall.

April 9:  Get Lost!
Book Task:  Write out directions for finding the way back to base shelter that a character in your novel might give to other characters in the same survival scenario.
Survival Task:  Learn basic orienteering skills to help establish your position and find your way to another position.

April 23:  Reading the Sky
Book Task:  Give a live weather report on the conditions during a perilous time in a survival novel you have read.
Survival Task:  Learn basic meteorology that will help you prepare for inclement conditions in a survival situation. Also learn to navigate using the stars in the night sky.

 May 7:  Emergency Shelter
Book Task:  Create a model or draw a diagram of the first shelter built or used by the survivors in a book you have read.
Survival Task:  Learn how to build a lean-to shelter to protect you from the elements in a survival situation.

May 17-18:  SURVIVAL CAMP-OUT!
To “qualify” for this two-day/overnight challenge, you must attend at least 5 of the 6 sessions, read 2 or more survival novels, and complete at least 5 book tasks.