> Poquonock Elementary School's New "All-Access Playground".
Poquonock Elementary School's New "All-Access Playground".
| Windsor residents of all ages are invited to a Community-Wide Ribbon Cutting to formally open Poquonock Elementary School's new "All-Access Playground". The free celebration will take place on Thursday, October 5 from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. at the playground at 1760 Poquonock Ave. (if rain, the ceremony will be held indoors). To kick off the celebration, dozens of Poquonock students will cut a long ribbon at the very same time. After the ceremony, children can enjoy a community playtime on the new handicapped accessible playground. The new playground will be used by children who live throughout Windsor. "This special opening celebration is the culmination of four years of fundraising at Poquonock Elementary School," explains Nancy Cheney, Playground Committee Co-Chair. "Since we kicked off our fundraising project, children have deposited more than 1 million pennies into a large collection machine in the school hallway. The collection unit was specially designed and built by students, and featured tubes for counting by 10,000s and a glass window, so the children could see the number of coins steadily grow. Before it was emptied, the collection box was estimated to weigh 5,511 lbs. or 2.7 tons about the weight of three cars. In fact, if the pennies were stacked into a single column, it would be more than 5,000 feet tall!" Poquonock Elementary School students, their families, and the school's PTO have been hard at work raising funds for the $80,000 project since 2002. They raised money at annual tag sales and karate clinics, at booths at Windsor's Shad Derby, at birthday parties, through a raffle, and even while trick or treating. Local businesses and civic associations, and community families stepped forward with their own generous contributions to ensure that enough funds were raised beyond the million-penny drive. The playground was constructed in four phases with all of the labor provided by the Poquonock Elementary School parents, teachers, and PTO members. Throughout the month of September, the entire school has been counting down the days by counting up the pennies. The October 5th 5 p.m. event will cap off a day-long celebration that will include a special school-wide assembly, featuring the return of former Poquonock students who built the original penny collection machine. Windsor Federal Savings is generously providing employees to coordinate the counting of all the pennies. In addition, Cummins-Allison Corporation is transporting special high-speed coin counting machines with a supervisor down from Massachusetts, at no cost to the school, to facilitate the project. For more information about the October 5 Community-Wide Ribbon Cutting of Poquonock Elementary School's All-Access Playground, call the school at (860) 687-2080, ext. 0. |