Sandwich Children's Center is in the process of revitalizing our School Age Classroom. We are located in a small town surrounded by hiking trails, fields, museums, galleries and a friendly community. Our building was originally constructed in 1855 and was one of the town's original one-room schoolhouses until 1953. When Sandwich Central School opened the building was sold and became a hardware store for many years. An extra structure was constructed on the building for storage. In 1985, Sandwich Children's Center opened on the upper level of the building. As the center grew it expanded into the whole building. Currently our School Age Program is located inside what was once the storage area for the hardware store. The school age classroom is for students 5-12 years of age. The room sees a lot of educational activities for these children, many of which are provided by local experts in their fields including science and astronomy, arts and crafts, and many others. The Sandwich Home Industries NH League of Craftsmen use SCC as the location for their children's Art Series throughout the summer as well.

We were able to secure tax credits through the Community Development Finance Authority to assist us in the cost of the construction of our new space. BEAM Construction Associates, Inc will be doing the work, we will be demolishing the existing room and rebuilding a new energy efficient sun filled classroom for the children. Any donations are going to go straight to our School Age classroom renovation as well as our Nature Explore classroom outside.

We have been working on becoming a certified Nature Explore Outdoor Classroom, it's a rigorous time consuming plan, but so worth it in the long run. We've almost completely finished getting all the plastics off our playground, we have been busy creating spaces with natural items. We now have a circle of large rocks for our gathering area, a tree cookie patio for building with blocks, and a wooden climbing structure with a slide for the children. We have many different gardens, a butterfly garden that attracts pollinators, a caterpillar cafeteria filled with caterpillar's favorite plants, as well as a new 8x12 greenhouse we received with a grant from the Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare Foundation.

Thank you so much for any donations we really appreciate it.