Bringing the Little Dragons' Dream to Life! After unloading all of the donated items at the playground, Mrs. Miller and her colleagues submitted their order of the remaining equipment to the NPE office, who then purchased each item. It took about 2 weeks for all of the items to arrive, which felt like eternity😅 Once Mrs. Miller notified us that everything had been delivered, Alaina and I were so excited to see everything and get to work building the playground! We took a final trip to the playground this past weekend to assemble everything and bring the Little Dragons Dream to life. Since Alaina and I are not particularly experts when it comes to building playground equipment, the NPE custodian, Junior, was kind enough to pre-assemble the playlet, swing, and teeter-totter before we arrived to put the rest of the items together. I had so much fun putting together the playground and watching it all come together. The plastic caterpillar surprisingly had quite a few instructions and pieces, but Alaina and I had a great time building it😁 Once we organized and put together all of the mats and laid out all of the stepping stones and beams, the playground was finished! Before After Thank You!
Alaina and I couldn't be more appreciative of everyone's support in accomplishing the Little Dragons' Dream! We ended with a grand total of over $2200 worth of equipment.🥳I want to give a special thank you to Mrs. Fosnow, Mrs. Miller, and the amazing NPE staff that helped raise most of the funds for the equipment in the coin drive, Junior for putting together some playground items, Jovanna & Cake Hole for providing beautiful and delicious cupcakes for Mrs. Miller's class to enjoy, New Pal Nutrition for allowing us to set up a donation jar, and everyone who donated an item from the Amazon wishlist. A major thank you goes out to Mr. Large for guiding us along and promoting this project and giving us the opportunity to help our community. None of this would've been possible without the overwhelming support of the New Palestine community. Thank you so much for following along this journey, and please reach out if you have any questions!
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Organizing! Following the excitement of the coin drive, it was time to start purchasing items! We had Mr. Large post the our flyer one last time on Facebook, and we collected a couple more donated items, as well as a $75 Amazon gift card, which we used to purchase storage bins. We also took a trip over to the preschool to get a final look at the space and see what items would fit best once the area was cleaned out. We then began clearing out the space, setting a few unwanted items outside the school for free. After the space was cleared, the preschool teachers had a meeting to discuss items they were in need of and ones they felt would best accommodate their students. Once we had an idea of specific items they wanted, we created a spreadsheet that we could enter the remaining Amazon wishlist items on for their prices to be automatically subtracted from the total of our coin drive proceeds. We then shared this spreadsheet with Mrs. Miller and told her the rest of the funds could be used for anything else they needed. The teachers were overjoyed with how much new and fun equipment they will soon have for the indoor playground winter months. Mrs. Miller took the coin drive funds to the NPE office for the school to make a mass purchase of all items chosen. We are currently waiting on all of the items to be delivered, and we plan to chose a weekend in the near future to assemble and organize the finished product of the playground! While waiting for the final items to arrive, I loaded up all of the donated items that have been collecting in my garage over the last few months to take to the preschool. Alaina and I met there to unload these items and transfer them into the preschool for storage. We are officially all ready to begin building the playground, as we anxiously await for the last items to arrive!
Coin Drive! Following fall break, we had one week to finish preparation for the coin drive. Before break we made a poster to be sent out in the NPE newsletter and posted around the school, and we sent this poster to Mrs. Fosnow and also asked for list of all the teachers' names to begin making buckets that would collect coins in each teachers' room. She loved our flyer, and sent us a list of teachers. Mr. Large had several buckets for us to use to collect coins in, so we took about 25 of them. We then began making the graphics for the front of the buckets and teacher name labels. Once we returned from fall break, We put all the buckets together and touched base again with Mrs. Fosnow. We coordinated coin pick up days of Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday after school, and found fridge storage space for the cupcakes. She also included an announcement to get kids excited for the coin drive every day of the week leading up to the drive. Over the weekend before the coin drive, we went to NPE with Mrs. Miller to distribute the buckets to each teachers' room along with a flyer, and we posted 4 larger posters around the school. Once each room was ready to begin collecting coins, we awaited our first pick up day (Tuesday) and hoped for the best. We were initially a little skeptical as to if we could fundraise a lot of money from just coins, and we set a goal of around $400. Dropping off buckets and hanging posters Picking Up CoinsOn our first collection day, we were shocked by how much participation the coin drive had attracted and were so excited to see so many coins collected in just two days. Visiting each classroom and collecting coins was slightly more time consuming than we had initially thought, and with our busy schedules and already being late to practices, we decided it would be best to weigh each classroom's bag of coins throughout the week for updates to be sent out through email with each class' ranking. Counting all of the coins each day would take an extremely long time, so we decided we would estimate the runnings during the drive through the weights and get actual class totals at the bank at the end of the drive. Tuesday's collection got us very excited for later in the week, as we would be collecting nickels and dimes on Thursday. First collection day/ setup We returned to NPE on Thursday and were again shocked by the competition between and participation of all classes. As our cart began getting heavier to push, we become more more more excited. After collecting and weighing each classroom's totals for Wednesday and Thursday, we updated the rankings to be sent out to every teacher, and we combined all each class' coins into individual bags. We were already thrilled with the results, and we couldn't wait for the final day of our coin drive: hat day/$1! 2nd Collection Day: Thursday Because the classes had planned to wear costumes and have Halloween parties on Friday, we decided it wouldn't work well for us to pick up the buckets at the end of the day, and luckily Mrs. Miller was kind enough to collect each class' bucket earlier in the day and store them in her room until we could come after school to count them. We headed to Cake Hole after school on to pick up the cupcakes being donated, and they looked amazing! Jovanna did an amazing job creating a variety of cupcakes that the winning class is sure to enjoy. THANK YOU CAKEHOLE!!!
Results!We called First Merchants Bank ahead of time, and they kindly agreed to waive the commission charge the bank usually takes from the coin counter to make sure me make as much profit as possible for our project. Transferring the coins from the car to inside the bank was a little difficult, and we had to split the coins into several bags to be able to transport them. The process of counting the coins took much longer than anticipated. We counted each class individually, and there were a total of 25 classes. It took around 2 and a half hours until we had each class total and the grand total. As we watched the class totals come in, we were absolutely shocked and amazed by the results. Mrs. Miller's class ended up coming in first, with an amazing total of $232.40! They will enjoy their cupcakes on Monday. After seeing that the total from a single class was over half of our goal, we couldn't wait to get the entire school total. After adding each class's total, we arrived at a grand total of $1,701.06! We couldn't believe it; this was over four times our goal! This is more than enough to purchase every item left on our wishlist we planned on including in the playground. We are so incredibly thankful for everybody who helped make this project happen. We couldn't have achieved this without the help of the amazing NPE staff, especially Mrs. Fosnow and Mrs. Miller, the amazing donation from Cake Hole, and guidance from Mr. Large. We are so excited to get to purchasing fun items for the playground and to begin building the Little Dragons' Dream! At the bank! Mrs. Miller's class enjoying their cupcakes!
Getting Started! To begin formulating a plan and timeline for Little Dragons' Dream, we coordinated a meeting with Mrs. Fosnow, the NPE principal. She, along with Mr. Askander who is shadowing her, gave great feedback and ideas and were very excited about our project. Mrs. Fosnow agreed that the indoor play area is in need of reform, and she gave us the green light to continue forward with promoting our Amazon Wishlist and posting flyers around NPE. She was very helpful and kindly gave us access to the school's poster printer and any other materials when needed. Her welcoming and engaging attitude gave us a lot of excitement and motivation. While discussing out funding options, we ran our idea of a coin drive by her and she thought that would be a great idea. We decided to have each day of the week be geared towards a specific coin (ex: pennies on Monday, nickels on Tuesday, etc.), with Friday being a hat day for the kids to bring a dollar and wear a hat. We found that the best date to do this coin drive would be the week of October 25th-29th. With this on our schedule and a lot of ideas flowing, we left this meeting very excited for the future. To begin publicizing our project, we took a day to travel around to local New Palestine businesses asking them to put up our flyer in their windows/ anywhere around their business. The first few places we stopped in were either too busy to talk with us or didn't have access to a manager at that time, which was initially discouraging. However, we continued searching and came across many generous businesses. We were able to post flyers in the library, Mama Nita's, New Palestine Nutrition, and Cake Hole! We also went to NPE to print two larger posters to post around the school, and we hung many smaller posters in teachers' rooms around NPHS. After getting the word out through flyers/posters, we took the next step: social media. Mr. Large was very helpful in spreading the word through posting out flyer with a link to our Amazon wishlist in the New Palestine Community Facebook group. Mrs. Fosnow included our flyer in the general school newsletter, and Alaina's mom, Mrs. Miller, included the flyer in the preschool newsletter. Alaina and I also reached out to the neighboring elementary schools of SCE and BWE, who included the flyer in their newsletters and posted it to Twitter. This is when our project started to take off. We received our first purchase off this wishlist hours after Mr. Large's Facebook post, which was very exciting. More orders kept coming in throughout the day and following week, and I anxiously awaited these items' arrival at my house. Within a short few days, several items were delivered, and we began seeing out project come to life. While we still await bigger and more expensive items to be purchased off the list, this first step is a big milestone for our project. Once we began planning the logistics of the coin drive, we wanted there to be a reward for the winning class to further incentivize students to bring in change throughout the week. After brainstorming local business that may be willing to donate a treat, we decided to ask Cake Hole if they would be willing to kindly donate cupcakes for the winning class to have a cupcake party. We were initially nervous this plan would fall through because of this being a big ask, but Jovanna was super supportive and offered to donate 36 cupcakes for the winning class! We were extremely excited about this, and we now have a pick-up date scheduled for the Friday of the coin drive. Shifting back to fundraising, we moved on to the next idea on our list of placing donation jars at a couple local businesses that get a lot of traffic. We began by using donated jars from my dad's business and decorating them using Alaina's Cricut machine and ribbon. We also made smaller cards to attach to and set next to jars for customers to take with them. We decided to visit New Palestine Nutrition and Cake Hole again, and they kindly placed our jars at the front of their businesses for customers to donate. We plan to pick up these jars mid-October. Overall, we have a lot of exciting things happening in our project right now, and we are extremely excited to get closer to the Little Dragons' Dream coming to life. Cards to place next to/ attach to donation jars
Little Dragons' Dream is a project geared towards the collection of new indoor playground equipment for preschool children at New Palestine Elementary's Little Dragons' Early Learning program to enjoy during the gloomy and long winter. While brainstorming possible project ideas with my partner, Alaina Miller, we felt very passionately about helping children and providing them with a joyous environment. Because Alaina's mom is a preschool teacher at NPE's Early Learning program, we were able to gain a lot of early insight to a strong need of the program: an improved indoor playground. In the winter, many preschoolers lose their opportunity to have an effective recess. Currently, in the NPE preschool, they are limited to a small space with a small amount of equipment during indoor recess. Her mom and other preschool teachers expressed the importance of being able to give these kids a better area to properly interact and relieve stress during the harsh winter months. They expressed that their current area could use a lot more interactive equipment, improved organization, and a more lively feel. This instantly sparked a cascade of ideas regarding ways we could help them achieve this. We began brainstorming fundraising ideas, creating promotional graphics, and contacting local businesses and administration to discuss funding options and promote our cause. While doing this, we centered around the goal and spread the message of providing them with a proper space and new equipment for them to enjoy and relax during the cold winter months in which they will be unable to have a proper outdoor playground. We visited the play area to get more ideas on what was needed and grasp an idea of what would fit and look nice in the space. After doing this, we created an Amazon wishlist with items we felt would be a best fit for the area. This is our plan for receiving the bulk of our donations. Through posting a link and QR code (on flyer) with access to this list, anyone is able to purchase products that will be shipped to us and included in the playground. Along with this, we plan to fundraise through NPHS sporting event stands, a coin drive at NPE, and donation jars at local businesses. Our goal is to engage as many community members and attention to our cause to gain optimal resources needed to produce the best playground renovation possible, and so far we are off to a great start! Pitch Day! After organizing all of our ideas into a cohesive presentation to present to school administration, we were ready to get the word out about Little Dragons' Dream. We made sure to include our centralized goal of supplying the preschool with a more organized and fun-filled area for the kids to play and relieve built-up energy during winter, examples of equipment such as mats and climb boxes, resources needed such as donations and teacher influence, and logistics regarding how we will obtain these resources such as organizing fundraising events and coordinating meetings with NPE's principal. We have already began organizing a coin drive fundraising event for mid to late October to keep us on track for our goal of a completed playground by winter (late November/ early December). Preparing this presentation was an amazing collaborative experience that got us more excited and motivated for the future of our project. While planning logistics and discussing resources needed was initially overwhelming, we now feel much more prepared and hopeful for the success of our project. Presenting to administrators and peers, while a nerve-racking experience, was very insightful and motivating. Not only did we gain great feedback on ways to improve our project and ideas about possible fundraising options, but we also felt very inspired and excited about our peers' amazing ideas. We gained feedback as to what equipment may be best to include, such as sensory toys and textured mats, which helped shape our Amazon wishlist. Gaining feedback from administration, who have an inside look and a lot of experience with enacting positive change throughout schools, was a very rewarding experience that definitely provided us with an abundance of outside excitement and began the process of turning our project into reality. Pitch Day Presentation |
AuthorHello, my name is Kennedy Garrett, and I am a senior at New Palestine High School. I can't wait to take you along the journey of the Little Dragons' Dream! |