We ended our 2009/2010 school year with our annual family picnic at Lacy Park. It was a time to celebrate and visit and enjoy spending time with those children moving on and those who will be with us another year. It was a very pleasant surprise to have Pastor Art and Michelle Naylor come and “gift” us with movie passes and snacks from the church. We appreciate being appreciated. Thank you very much. We love being a part of the SMCCUCC family. Our staff did some cleaning of our storage room and made preparations for Our Super Summer School Extravaganza for a few days and then dove right into the program! We started our summer with a week of Artistic Expressions where we did a multitude of art activities using many different materials.

Our second week theme was Science Exploration…Preschool style with lots of experiments, many were edible! We also had a visit from High Touch/High Tech Science…always a hit!

Week three will find us diving into Amazing Authors each day and doing activities relating to the books like making green eggs and ham for Dr. Seuss and doing some super dress up for “Fancy Nancy”.

Week four will find us having Outdoors Adventures with tents and a cook out and much more.

Week five will be our Children around the World week and week six will find us exploring ways that we can Recycle, Reduce, Reuse.

Our final week will include all the fun activities that didn’t fit into a prior theme. It will be Activities Galore. Summer is always a lot of fun.

Unfortunately, we have a lower enrollment this year due to some local schools opening a summer program for the first time. If you know of any young children who would like to enjoy some fun in the sun, send them over!

Our staff attended a very good music workshop on a Saturday recently and we had our annual staff and their families barbecue and volleyball game at my home. The old folks (me being one) once again were victorious over the young ones!!! It was a lot of fun.

I am off to Utah this week for the Western States Leadership Conference put on by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. It is a fun and worthwhile event.

August will be the time that we all rest and recharge to come back and start all over again in September. We still have some spaces available for fall so we are hoping for students age 2 through 5 to join our program. Happy Summer!

Connie James-Gilliland