Grantees

Purchase a new computer system to help them increase their capacity and sustainability.

The Henry Sheldon Museum in Middlebury, Vermont is planning a new hands-on space for children and families titled “Inventing the Future: A Kids’ Makerspace” and we are requesting funding for a Rig-a-ma-jig Basic Building kit. This space will serve children and families/caregivers from all over Addison County to boost connection, foster engagement, and connect children and families with their community museum. We will invite children and their families/ caregivers to create, collaborate, explore, test, experiment, and invent in the new space and the Rig-a-ma-Jig kit will be an ideal opportunity for children to learn through open-ended play sparked by STEM/STEAM learning.

With this grant, DREAM will expand their mentoring program to two new DREAM Programs in Vermont with the College of St. Joseph and UVM.

Bonnyvale Environmental Education Center is collaborating with the Boys & Girls Club of Brattleboro to build on the success of their “Hike and Seek” pilot program to continue to provide outdoor learning and recreation experiences for youth and their families. This program will operate free bi-weekly on Saturdays from 10AM through noon during the school years, 24-26. Each session of the program will be operated on a drop-in basis at locations around Windham County. This series structure creates access to programming for families in our rural towns, allowing youth and parents/caregivers to attend the sessions that aligns with their schedules. Each program session focuses on different outdoor skills and inquiry-based learning and STEAM.

Currently, we are sharing one dishwasher for all three of our classrooms and students and this has become a strain on our teachers. Because dishwashing properly is essential to meeting the dish sanitization requirements outlined in the CBCCPP licensing regulations, as well as ease the cleaning responsibilities teachers have we are requesting funding for a second dishwasher. We are also requesting funding to replace our existing nap bedding (sheets, blankets and pillows) as they are several years old. We believe it greatly supports families that we provide these napping materials and launder them at school. Finally, we are requesting grant funding for a new picnic table and mud kitchen for our playground. We deeply believe in outdoor learning and currently we do not have a mud kitchen for our playground and we believe messy, sensory play would be great for our students.

A summer food program where food is bussed into a summer program in Hinesburg, VT.

School-based dental clinic provides access to the preventive/resotrative oral health care low income children needs to be healthy and ready to learn.

Assess the feasibility of mentors for elementary-age English Language Learners (ELL) using books, Literacy games and story-telling in their home languages in five Chittenden County existing EW!VT sites.