Parents and Children's Playgroup: The CUMC playgroup is accepting registrations for its 2002/2003 preschool parents' cooperative program. The two hour session includes free play, stories, snacks, arts and crafts and music. The group is open to children from eighteen months to 4 years of age. For further information or if you would like to register your child please call Maria at 718-894-5064, or Barbara at 718-894-8654

The CUMC Parents' Cooperative Preschool Playgroup has just completed twenty-one years of service to the community. The program was launched in February of 1979 by two local teachers, Ginetta Sollecito and Linda Faltin, who decided to form a new Playgroup when they found that the only local program had a long waiting list. Only nine children registered, but on the first day, fifty children and their mothers were waiting for our doors to open! Two of the mothers immediately stepped forward to lead a second group. Since that day, we have been blessed with many willing and able volunteers and the Playgroup grew to a high point of thirteen groups, meeting on six days of the week and serving over three hundred children. Since then, a number of new playgroups have been formed in neighboring communities and we have settled into more comfortable numbers: eight groups with about two hundred children.

We are thankful to have been instrumental in helping so many little ones to have a happy first learning experience and we look forward to many more years of successful community outreach. It may be that soon, with God's blessings, we will be welcoming back a second generation as our "graduates" grow up and bring their own children for the CUMC Playgroup experience!