Community Groundbreaking Success!

Tuesday, June 21, 2022 - Last week, we welcomed friends, neighbors, parents, supporters, and volunteers to the Little Peaks Preschool & Early Childhood Center construction site. We gathered on the sunny Tuesday afternoon to check out our progress and revel in the fact that this is actually happening!

We started near the road, debuted our new road name (1 Both Meadow Trail in honor of Tom and Alana Both), shared the rendering of the our new building (prepared by architect Chris White and artist Dena Bellows and printed in partnership with Northwood School), then walked down our new road to the building site. The site had been cleared of backfill, leaving a three foot trench in the dirt from which our building will rise. Earlier that afternoon, concrete footers had been poured.

The highlight of the event - hands down - was when current preschoolers summited the mountain of backfill. We were overjoyed to see kids getting so much out of the site, even in construction mode. It was so special to have current and future Little Peakers (some in utero!!) rally behind our community movement. This week, we are making headway on our building foundation - cement, rubber wall, insulation, and more. If you are in the area and want a tour of the site, please reach out to Reid.

Then, on Friday, our current preschoolers and their families gathered at the Community Center to celebrate another amazing school year. Students sang songs, broke open piñatas that they hand-crafted in class, and enjoyed a potluck with friends and family. Current parent Danielle Cave took photos of each family in front of our community schoolhouse to commemorate the year. This is the last week of preschool for the 2021-2022 school year. As a current parent, I want to offer a brief reflection and word of thanks for our program and teachers. Katherine, Kaycie, Anita, and Maestra offered our children a loving and enriching home-away-from-home. They oversaw mission-driven, research-backed, and philosophically-original preschool program that helped my toddler evolve into a child. The Little Peaks community pulled us of out pandemic mode and into the Keene community in a deeply meaningful way, and we are forever grateful to Little Peaks for driving community engagement and child development. This program and our new center will fuel this community’s growth and evolution for generations to come, and I am so proud to be a part of this effort.

Until next week…

Reid Jewett Smith, Ph.D., Executive Director of Little Peaks