BUILDING BRIDGES:
Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”
matthew 19:14
Children are always welcome at Bridges!
While parents attend the Getting Ahead Workshop, Tuesday Night Staying Ahead meetings, Celebrate Recovery sessions, or community activities, the kids are always welcomed and cared for free of charge! In our Bridges Kids Program, we offer the children more than just a babysitting session and a snack. We are intentional about our time with them by providing fun character-building lessons, team-building lessons, and helping the children learn how to self-regulate and learn social-emotional skill.
We also utilize the PATHS (Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies) curriculum with the children, which is an evidence-based comprehensive program for promoting emotional and social competencies and reducing aggression and behavior problems. Many of the kids have improved with IEP scores and we have heard success stories from parent-teacher conferences.
We work with our community partners, Iowa State University Extention and Outreach (ISU), the Burlington Public Library, and the Burlington Art Center to help teach the children things such as STEM activities, how to stay safe if home alone or in strange places, chores to work on and how to be responsible and helpful at home, preparing simple meals, how to show manners, etc… We provide a monthly calendar at our Staying Ahead meetings that let parents know about upcoming guest speakers and events. During the summer and holiday times, we often have fun special activities for the kids that include barbeques in the park, community service projects, singing carols at the nursing home, and more and more each year.
As we learn in Bridges, reading helps develop language skills and increase school readiness for children. The Kids Book Club provides a monthly opportunity for each child to choose from a variety of books purchased by Bridges through donations. The Book Club was started by one of our lovely Volunteers, Miss Virginia Garnjobst. Virgina stated, “When I attended the very first training for Bridges Out of Poverty, one statement made by facilitator Jim Ott stuck with me: “If you read to your child every day from the day he’s born, he or she will be ready for school at five years old.” I wondered, is it really that simple? It is, because from those stories the child hears complete sentences, he or she hears Standard English, they hear vocabulary and sentence patterns—over and over and over! Convinced, I started raiding the bookshelves of Hopefully Yours, the Salvation Army, and Friends of the Library sales for “gently-read” books for the Bridges children, usually one or two full shopping bags for each class. Then I thought, “Why not new books?” and began to envision a Book-of-the-Month Club with brand new—not used—books for the Bridges children. I would start with the youngest girl, who was four months old, and go up to the five-year-olds (copying the age group from Jim Ott’s statement). Before long, though, I realized I needed to include their older siblings; so I expanded the Book Club from birth through Middle School.
