ALLEN - On Thursday, March 25th, sixty adults and children (pre-natal to five years of age) who are enrolled in American Horse School’s FACE (Family and Child Education) Program attended the monthly FACE Family Circle Evening.

The children had a variety of learning activities to participate in, including: planting flower seeds and decorating the pots, weaving “buggy” mats, making Bunny Easter Bags, Stamping Easter designs on paper, and coloring clear plastic eggs with permanent markers, scratching Easter Eggs to bring out colors, dyeing eggs, and the grand finale an Easter Egg Hunt! Darren Richards and Jerry Has No Horse ran our Census Table with information, promotional gifts, and a practice Census to fill out. Cheyenne Tallman and Keanna Brien rolled a few hundred eggs across half of the gym floor and the children had a great time running around and picking up candy filled eggs to put in their bags. I’m not sure who had a better time the children “hunting” the eggs or the adults watching them “hunt”!

Parents received lots of Incentives from National Relief Charities for attending the event, earning points for their homebased visits, doing lesson activities and reading to their children. Parents choose bar soap, toilet paper, paper towel, baby wipes, Pedialyte, disposable baby changing pads, t-shirts, knit youth hats, water bottles, and a variety of sweaters and shirts.

Pizza, cheese bread sticks, salad , and drinks were eaten for dinner, after dinner each family was given the book Zinnia Plants a Garden. Jennifer May, adult education teacher, and myself took turns reading the book while the parents and children followed along. Parents were also given book cards offering suggestions on questions to ask and activities to do as they read the book with their children. We talked about the importance of reading and that a child needs to be read to 5,000 times before they are ready to read.

Five Easter Dinner Baskets were raffled which held a ham, bag of potatoes, Jello, fruit cocktail, graham crackers, ginger snaps, cake mix, frosting, marshmallows, and corn. Six Easter baskets, 2 sets of filled eggs, and three stuffed animals were also raffled. The evening concluded with the opening of the Incentive Store and parents spending their American Horse School FACE “Bucks”.

We will look forward to our next FACE Family Circle Night at 5:00 pm on April 15th entitled Beach Blast. The FACE Program will also have Play Dates each Wednesday in April ( 7th, 14th, 21st, & 28th). These Play Dates are for children 3- 5 years old and their parents who are interest in the Center-based Program. You may come any time between 8:00 am and 2:00 pm, see what the FACE Program is all about, let your child play and eat a meal with us.