A year ago, the Rotary Club of Longmont Twin Peaks and Wildplum teamed up to create learning toolkits for children in order to combat the loss of learning that occurred in 2020 due to the COVID-19 Pandemic.
On Friday, the program continued again for 2022, and six volunteers met at the Wild Plum Center at 839 Meeker St. in Longmont to prepare the items and make the toolkits
The volunteers made two different toolkits; 120 toolkits for children in preschool and 84 for infants and toddlers.
The toolkits include a variety of items that help kids continue their education outside the classroom over the summer. The toddler toolkit includes a small jar for iSpy with items sprinkled throughout a jar of rice, Oh balls — a hole-filled ball used to string scarves through — tug boxes where kids can play with different fabrics and different textures, books and bubbles.
The toolkits for the older children include similar items, but offer more challenges. Their bag includes books, nature walk guide, larger version of iSpy, bubbles, chalk, and sticky line ball rolling.
Angela Jenson, a former teacher, and current curriculum coordinator for the infant toddler program and coach, at Wild Plum designed the toolkits for the students.
“Some things I have done in the classroom in the past, things that I would be easy for parents to deal with. I included things that are easy and beneficial at the same time,” Jenson said.
All of the items within the bag help foster varying elements of development. For example, the nature walk offers the opportunity for the students to use math and their gross motor skills. There is a “Brown Bear, Brown Bear” book activity that fosters language literacy by allowing students to retell the story with pictures.
The elements of development are laid out for the parent so they know exactly what skills they are helping grow within their child, according to Davis.
Keri Davis, community partnership director at Wildplum, and a member of the Rotary Club, explained that this program is very important to their students and parents at Wild Plum because most do not have the economic resources to provide this for their children themselves.
“Our parents are all low income families. They don’t have a lot of these resources so being able to provide for them is just an opportunity that we thought we should fill,” Davis said.
The toolkits will be handed out to students on Monday and Tuesday of this coming week, at all five of the Wild Plum locations. Including both buildings at 839 Meeker St., The Heart of Longmont Church, and their administrative office at 17th Avenue and Pace Street.
There is also an option for Spanish directions.
“Everything is in Spanish and English because we are about 80% Latino in the schools,” Davis said.
The rotary club funds a project as a one-time project. Charlene Gearing, in charge of the grants for the rotary club, explained.
“We as a club can say this is important and do it every year. Then we have to fundraise, because we don’t charge each other money to do good, we fundraise to do good,” Gearing said.
