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Elijah Randell (left) pokes his head out as children from the Fredericksburg Regional Head Start program participate in an outdoor classroom with Friends of the Rappahannock.
With a grant from PNC Bank and help from Friends of the Rappahannock, Head Start students got a field trip to the river yesterday.
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Glenn Kinard of PNC Bank, which awarded the grant, said his company wants to invest in future community leaders. |
The 4-year-olds dipped their fingers into a pail of river water.
"It's cold," they said, some shivering.
Moments before, a few had bragged they'd swim to the other side of the river. The temperature, for the moment, discouraged them.
Maureen Hamm, education director of Friends of the Rappahannock, told them to observe the river.
"What do you see?" she asked.
It was a question they heard all morning.
The roughly 200 Fredericksburg Regional Head Start students who walked through the woods on field trips yesterday and Thursday received a lesson for the senses.
They looked for shapes in logs, smelled leaves and listened for animal sounds.
Through PNC Bank's "Grow Up Great" program and its $36,500 grant, Head Start and Friends of the Rappahannock designed a program focusing on early childhood education.
The field trip to the woods was the first of six planned excursions.
Glenn Kinard, regional president of PNC Bank, said the company recognizes the need to invest in the future of at-risk children, who have the potential to become community leaders.
The company hopes to do this through partnerships.
In the past year, PNC already has donated a total of $66,500 to the Rappahannock United Way, Old Forge Junction Inc., Fredericksburg Regional Head Start and Friends of the Rappahannock.
"We were not only able to serve as the tipping agent, but we were able to introduce an early childhood program at another" organization, Kinard said.
This is Friends of the Rappahannock's first foray into designing classes for children up to age 5.
Hamm said this grant was unique, because PNC provided volunteers and collaborated with them throughout the process.
Regional Head Start director Trudy Smith said the organization and the Grow Up Great program aim to focus on entire families.
Parents are encouraged to go over exercises at home. Many accompanied their children on the field trip yesterday.
As the children walked with their eyes closed and their hands guided by a single rope, Smith proclaimed they would grow up to be engineers.
"When I first came to Head Start, we used to say we're getting children ready for kindergarten," Smith said in an earlier interview. "I'm saying now we're getting them ready for college and life."
But that's years from now. For the time being, they were preoccupied with which animal they wanted to be.
"A skunk," one said.
He and his comrades--who chose to be frogs, tigers and rabbits--soon followed their teachers back to the school bus, where they perhaps regaled each other with all they'd seen.
Karen Bolipata 540/374-5418
Email: kbolipata@freelancestar.com
