Holmes families have fun with bike and garden night activities

September 16, 2024

Holmes Elementary School students enjoyed an entertaining evening by riding bicycles, roaming through a garden and relishing tasty ice-flavored treats.
 
Dozens of families and students flocked to campus for the second annual Holmes Family Bike and Garden Night. The school’s Community Learning Center (CLC) gave people a chance to meet their neighbors, discover more about the Holmes community garden and watch children bike around an obstacle course.
 
Students Avery, Emily, Will and Alex grinned as they set down their bikes on grass next to a school parking lot. They came to the event because they thought it would be a great way to spend a Friday night.
 
“We’re all friends and we wanted to have a good time here,” Alex said.
 
“We wanted to have fun,” Avery said as she ate a red and purple ice slushie out of a cup. “This is something that’s pretty nice.”
 
Holmes School Community Coordinator Dani Drbal said it was vital to provide strong family and community engagement through programs like the bike and garden night. She spent the evening overseeing activities for both adults and children.
 
“I think it’s really important for our families to have ways to engage with our school and the things we have to offer,” Drbal said. “It’s really nice for them just to come and hang out with their kids. Their kids get to hang out with their friends and their parents get to meet their kids’ friends. It’s really nice overall.”
 
School leaders launched the event last year after brainstorming ideas for promoting the community garden. Organizers decided to add the bike component to attract additional interest from children. Approximately 40 families came to the inaugural celebration.
 
“We felt like it went well,” Drbal said. “We did get some people last year who ended up being garden volunteers, which was really the main goal, drawing attention to the community garden. It was successful all in all.”
 
Local resident Anja Romhild was among those who supported the Holmes garden. She enjoyed her family’s experience at last year’s bike and garden night so much that she decided to help out in the garden at this fall’s event. She watched her daughter ride her scooter on the obstacle course before moving to the northwest side of the building.
 
Romhild and fellow volunteer Diane Petersen led children in a bingo scavenger hunt activity throughout the night. Students had to find a combination of flowers, insects and other garden items to complete their bingo cards. They could then ask Petersen to cut a flower from the garden to take home as a prize.
 
“I think it’s super important for these types of activities to happen,” Romhild said. “It brings families out and allows everyone to meet each other in a really fun environment. It’s a good thing for everyone.”
 
The evening’s lineup included several activities in the southwestern parking lot. Students motored around cones and moved under streamers hanging from a finish line gate in the obstacle course. They also took part in bike washing and bike decorating stations with parents and guardians.
 
Visitors encountered two educational booths as they moved along the western side of the school building. Katie Berck, an intern with the LPS Sustainability Department, provided people with information about the school district’s efforts to promote community gardens. She is supporting gardening programs and outdoor classrooms across LPS this year.
 
Four AmeriCorps students helped others enjoy free food through the Partnership for a Healthy Lincoln program. They offered visitors skewers that included tomatoes, basil seasoning and mozzarella cheese balls. There were also jalapeno poppers and pesto-and-cracker samples for them to try out. All of the produce at the booth came from the Holmes garden.
 
“Their AmeriCorps members come to school and lead a free after-school program for us, so we brought them out to help showcase our garden,” Drbal said.
 
Emily decided to try some green pesto on a wheat cracker when she visited the booth. She and the four volunteers grinned as she put the two ingredients together and ate them. She then received a small garden-based prize for participating in the activity.
 
Many families had supper together on wooden picnic tables after visiting local food trucks on site. Drbal said organizers invited the businesses to come this year in hopes of creating more fellowship opportunities around supper time.
 
Avery, Emily, Will and Alex said they were enjoying spending time together at Holmes. They were happy the school created an event where everyone could have fun and learn together.
 
“I’ve been excited about this ever since I found out we were having it again,” Alex said. “I think it’s a pretty cool thing to have.”

To learn more about Lincoln Community Learning Centers, visit our website at https://clc.lps.org/.
 
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