St. Paul's United Methodist Church
Friday, May 18, 2012
To know and follow Christ, and to help others know and follow Christ

SPRINT

SPRINT - St. Paul's Reaching out In Neighborhood Teams

A report from Lou Wherry, Director

SPRINT is a free summer activities program offered to the children of Wellington Heights and the near downtown area. There is no restriction on children joining the SPRINT program and any child is welcome in our program. This past summer we had children from the Kenwood area, the Madison area and the Monroe area. Many of these children participated in the Focus program and were brought to the church by grandparents.

Over 80% of our children come from the Wellington Heights and Polk School area. The majority of our children walk to the program

Our program provides a free nutritious lunch, through Neighborhood Meals, followed by free educationally-based activities and special field trips. Our program offers a safe environment and enthusiastic staff with a mission to provide a safe, happy, fun summer. All of our activities are free to the children and their families through the generosity of the St. Paul ‘s congregation and other fund raising in the community. We mix things up and have a well-balanced program that allows for learning, physical fitness and just plain fun.

A typical week at SPRINT includes the following:
Lunch: Provided through Neighborhood Meals; almost every child eats lunch with us.

Reading: We participate with the Barnes & Noble Summer Reading Program. Each child needs to read at least eight books and at the end of the program they receive a new book of their own. With the Barnes & Noble Reading Program each child must read the book, tell why they liked the book,  explain their favorite part, and then note the author of the book.

Exercise: We utilize the playgrounds at elementary schools and parks located around the church for outside activities. We play basketball and kickball, toss the Frisbees and football We also made up obstacle courses and ran the tracks. We hiked the trails and learned yoga. We work hard to keep the outside activities exciting and creative. We went to the water playgrounds at the parks. Each park allows us to introduce something new. . . the flower gardens at Noelridge or Old MacDonald’s Farm at Bever Park. Learning is always incorporated.

Quiet activities: We like to offer the kids the chance to build, draw, and grow. Some of these activities are learning to knit, taking Yoga, learning origami, creating and writing their own stories in the computer room, planting seeds to grow, beauty camp, airplane design and more. We also have a great group of speakers come in for the kids, like police officers about safety in the neighborhood and Red Cross people about babysitting safety and safety during storms.

Rainy days: You will find us using the church movie theater, the indoor recreation room, and the church library.

Field Trips: On field trip days we do something special. These field trips are greatly
anticipated by the children. . . it allows them to do something special that their family
could not financially afford to provide for them.

Field Trips in 2009

  • Swimming at the local swimming pools (Cherry Hill, Jones and the North Liberty Recreation Center)
  • Bowling
  • Wikiup Hill Environmental Education Center
  • McBride Field Museum, University of Iowa, Iowa City
  • “B” Avenue Fire Station & Dairy Queen
  • McDonald’s Blairs Ferry Rd.
  • Brucemore: Adventures with Leo
  • The History Center
  • Science Station
  • Twisters Gymnastics
  • Weekly trips to the Cedar Rapids Public Library Westdale
  • Cedar Rapids Ice Arena
  • Wasserbahn Water Park in Amana for the end of summer field trip

The majority of children in our program are from single family homes. We have children from the homeless shelter and those who live with grandparents or in foster homes. Many of the parents are extremely low-income and with little funds for the children during the summer. We have children from homes where the fathers are in prison for drugs and child abuse and child molestation.

Our program keeps the children off the streets and out of trouble. Our program benefits both the children and the guardians. The children are safe, well taken care of and are learning about how important they are and how important staying in school, following the rules and being a good person is. The parents benefit by using the time to work, attend classes or attend counseling. The time spent at SPRINT is beneficial to both the child and the adult guardian.