ViewFinder: Summer Fun, Education and Collaboration

The Attleboro Recreation Department has plenty of fun programs for kids this summer.

One program has students, Samantha Bodge and Anise Arsenault, working this summer as instructors with the traveling crafts program.Each day the students bring a fun craft to each of the City's playgrounds. It is a drop-in program with no registration needed. The most recent project was a money bank made from donated Pringles cans.

If crafts isn't your forte, but swimming and staying cool is, then one of the three city-owned and one state-owned pool is something to consider. Each Tuesday and Thursday a free lunch is being provided to all the children at the Briggs Pool by the Attleboro Area Council of Churches.

The AACC coordinates many of the food programs in the city and created this pilot program to provide this additional help to families. Erin Aremu, who is a widow with three children, was pleasantly surprised last week when the volunteers arrived with the lunches and more thrilled to know it would continue throughout the summer. 

"The lunches were wonderful and nutritious with a choice of either bologna or peanut butter and jelly, real fruit juice and a homemade cookie," she said. 

Another way to have fun while staying cool is by visiting the. The library has something for everyone including a summer reading program. The reading program is partnering with to buy animals for struggling families.

"Instead of buying prizes the children are voting to choose the animal they want to buy with the money usually set aside for prizes," Attleboro Children's Librarian Krystal Brown said.

Emma Small was very excited to share how many pins she had already earned, "I have four pins at home and now I have five she said talking about one she just received. "And for every pin I have, I have read five stories. Small said she is voting for the honeybees.