March Break at Rural Frontenac Community Services

Craig Bakay | Mar 13, 2019

March break or not, it is always busy at the Rural Frontenac Community Services Child Centre.

The EarlyON Centre for young children has programs in Sharbot Lake four days a week, Mondays and Thursdays from 8:30am -2:30pm, Wednesdays from 8:30am – noon, and Saturdays from 10am – 1pm. Programs are offered on Tuesdays in Mountain Grove at the Olden Hall and Fridays in Arden at the Kennebec Hall, both from 9am-2:30pm. Clarendon Central School in Plevna hosts the program on Mondays from 9:30am – 2pm. EarlyOn is in Harrowsmith at the Free Methodist Church from 9:30am - noon on Wednesdays, at the Bedford Hall on Fridays from 9:30-noon, at the Storrington Fire Hall from 9:30am - 3pm on Mondays, and at Trinity United Church in Verona on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:30am – 3pm. In Sydenham at the EarlyOn Centre at 4635 Mill Street, the program runs 6 days a week: 9am – 3pm on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays, 9am-noon on Wednesdays, noon-6:30 on Thursdays, and 10am -1pm on Saturdays

“About 95 per cent of my 35 hours a week are spent front line with families and their kids,” said Marcie Webster, who runs a lot of the northern programs. “We try to accommodate parents wishes for programming in the five learning domains of physical, emotional, cognitive, social and language.

“We have more kids over March break, but we have more parents who also bring older siblings and we welcome them too.”

For Youth Program Coordinator Martha Johnston, things do tend to change during March break as many of her programs tend to be of the after-school variety.

“We have set up a one-day, day camp and we’ve got 10 kids signed up for that,” she said. “And we’re also running the baby-sitting course on Thursday.

“But we also get to do some extra little things that we don’t normally get to do and we do have ongoing programs like snow-shoeing.”

“It’s mostly business as usual with extra little fun things that they’re not normally getting.”