By RHEA-FRANCES TETLEY
Staff Writer
As a way to start the new year off right at Valley of Enchantment Elementary School, the Crestline Lions Club purchased and donated $700 worth of specialized materials and equipment to create a sensory room for the special-education students at the school. This special room will also be available for other students to use, as well, when needed.
Three of the Lions members went to VOE school on Monday, Dec. 16 to help create the new sensory room at the school, transforming a former book storage room into a student-useable space. They met with teacher Danielle Moore and saw how this new space that now has been designated for student use needed to be set up and helped rearrange the books and other items that were in it and set up and assembled some of the new items for the students.
Mrs. Moore has been teaching special education students for the last 24 years and is very excited about how this room will be available for, not just the special ed students but for any student in the school who is having a bad day and needs a place to destress, relax or calm down. This will be a positive benefit for the entire student body and staff in offering them a less public space to work with students when they need it.
One of the items is a relaxing swing chair to calm students who may be agitated. There are two big yoga balls for lying on and stretching. There is a special beanbag chair and a sensory board where the sequins change colors when touched. The Lions were the first to experience writing their name on the sensory board, enjoying the sensations themselves.
Some of the other items included fidget toys, wooden boards, a magnet board, magnet letters and more. There are stretchy balls, a jellyfish lamp and another mood lamp that will add to the ambiance of the space. Plus, the Lions purchased foam padding squares for the floors, Kinetic Sand, Fluggle and much more, all identified by Mrs. Moore as items that would benefit these elementary-aged students.
These items were partially funded by a grant from the California Lions Foundation. The Crestline Club applied for the Lions “Back to School Grant,” for which they were approved and which helped the club afford the purchase of all these times. The grant received was $500 and the Crestline Lions Club added another $200 as they are very interested in education and students.
One of the ways the Lions Club raises funds to donate to various projects in the community is from their annual See’s Candies sales in front of the Crestline post office, from Dec. 14 until they sell out. The Lions stock all the popular boxes of See’s Candies and their lollypops, too. The prices are the same as in the See’s Candies stores. Other funds they recently raised were from their firewood raffle, announced in time for Thanksgiving.
One of their continuing fundraisers is sponsoring a monthly Bingo night at Leisure Shores senior center at 6 p.m. on the first Friday of each month.
One of their continuing projects is its St Jude’s greeting card project, where they save the fronts of all their greeting cards – birthday cards, anniversary, Christmas – to send to St Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The hospital uses them in projects with their patients.
The club’s other continuing project is something anyone in the community can help with. It is their VOE school soda pull tab collection project. At the school and at Lions events, they are collecting soda pull tabs to donate to the Ronald McDonald House this spring. They will be melted down and recycled into syringe needles. They are challenging each classroom in the school to collect the most pull tabs; the classroom that collects the most tabs will get an ice cream party from the Lions Club.
Some of their recent donations and service projects include requests from two students for eyeglasses and examinations. Over the past year, the club has also collected 694 pairs of used eyeglasses that they turned into the Percy Parrish Sight House for evaluation and future international distribution. Plus, the board approved a $250 donation for the Guide Dogs of the Desert.
The board of the Crestline Lions Club also approved a $200 donation to the Mountain Homeless Coalition and a $150 donation to Mountain Meals on Wheels. The Crestline Lions Club meets the fourth Tuesday of each month at Leisure Shores senior center on the east end of Lake Gregory. They are a very active club, with members who believe strongly in the Lions motto of “We Serve.”
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