Kids’ Interests Branch Out At Arboretum
LaReena Allison wasn’t sure what an arboretum was, but that didn’t stop her from boarding the bus idling outside Grant Elementary School.
“It’s like a park - with a lot of trees and flowers,” said LaReena, 11, pushing her glasses back onto the bridge of her freckled nose.
LaReena joined about 30 other children, ranging in age from 6 to 11, on a yellow school bus that took them to the John A. Finch Arboretum last Thursday.
The children are participants in Grant’s free summer school, which continues through next Thursday.
The morning program, sponsored by Spokane School District 81, has 160 participants.
The afternoon program, “Youth Gang Drug Prevention,” is sponsored by the city of Spokane. It has 58 participants.
Both programs offer crafts, cooking, art classes and field trips.
LaReena and friend Brandon Dituri, 6, chose to visit the arboretum while 130 children in the morning program chose Cat Tales, an exotic animal park off the Newport Highway.
The average cost of one of the weekly field trips is $2, said Kathy LeTellier, Grant school liaison.
Field trips have included visits to Spokane International Airport, the IMAX Theatre, and an afternoon at the ballpark, rooting for the Spokane Indians.
“For many of these kids it’s a chance to go to a movie, go on a field trip and learn about the world,” said Barbara Bolich, a summer school teacher who has special education classes during the regular school year at Grant.
The trip to the 65-acre arboretum gave kids the chance to play on the giant white willow, whose bark is scratched and scraped with hundreds of names, initials and hearts. Kids also were able to walk the Touch and See nature trail and construct and sail paper boats in tiny Garden Springs creek, which flows through the arboretum.
The land for the arboretum was donated by John A. Finch, a mining investor at the turn of the century, and D.H. Dwight, who kept a summer cottage in the area. The arboretum has more than 2,000 trees and shrubs representing over 600 species.
The children discovered that the trees at the arboretum wear metal identification tags - “like a dog’s,” said 8-year-old Hamisi Nunes.
The credit-card size tags identify the age and species of a tree.
Bolich and two other adults accompanied the children to the arboretum.
Dick Streeter, a sixth-grade teacher at Grant, pointed out ground-squirrel burrows and kept the kids off steep rock outcroppings.
Sheryl Cavakis, an instructional assistant, helped students fold their own origami boats, which many promptly launched over the creek’s tiny waterfalls.
In the final week of the summer school program, children will get the chance to visit Idaho’s Coeur d’Alene City Beach and the Silverwood theme park.
, DataTimes