Just a reminder about Clean up Day this Saturday, 9am-12.  We will be sweeping and cleaning off the surfacing, and painting fun designs and playground games!  

Save the date(s)!  Our big three fall events are coming, and we need your help!  

Sunday September 9th - Peabody International Festival!  We still need a few volunteers to take a 1-2 hr shift at the table anytime from 10-5

Saturday September 15th
Clean up the playground day!  We will have Endicott students with us as well, the plan is to clean the playground, pull weeds, and paint some fun stuff on the playground. Feel free to bring the kids - we'll have some activities planned for them.  9am-12pm  We need some food/drink donations as well as supplies! If you or someone you know would be willing to donate paint (for the asphalt not the building!), trash bags, gloves etc please let us know! We need as many volunteers as possible as well.

Saturday October 6th (Columbus Day weekend) 5k Race/Walk to the Playground!   We are partnering with Pumped for Life to hold our first (hopefully!) annual 5k!  We will have a shorter distance for kids as well as some post-race activities. Details for registration will be coming soon.  We will definitely need a lot of volunteers from about 7am - 2pm.  

• Thanks to those who came to Chuck E Cheese -  'twas a small turnout because of the weather, but every little bit counts!  
• Also remember Wendy's dine out nights both Fri August 24th and Monday August 27th at the Wendy's on Rt.1.
  

As some of you may have heard, the playground will be dedicated to
Mrs. Papi, who just retired from teaching second grade after 48 years at the Welch School. 

There will be a dedication ceremony on Wednesday, June 20th at noon. There
will be light refreshments provided.  Please join us if you can!

If you are able to help with set up, contact Dr. Nappi at the school or drop by at 10:30am...

(And please don't forget to keep voting on Facebook!  Still in third place!)

Recent Fundraisers:

o Flower Power
o Chuck E Cheese
o Prince Pizza
o Spring Dance
o All the ‘days’ (sunglasses, slippers, etc.)
o Bake sale

All told these raised over $1,000.

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Upcoming events include:

o The Barnes and Noble Bookfair on May 24th.  We need readers!
o Clean up day on Sept 15th.
o Auction – we are aiming for November 3rd
o Planning on a Carnival mid September
o B&N again in the fall
o Chuck E Cheese/Wendy’s Dine Out Nights during the summer

*******
Kaboom!

Good news!  We've made it to the next round in the Kaboom! video competition.  Now is where YOU come in!  We need people to sign up with Kaboom! 

• Go to www.ourdreamplayground.org
• Click on the 'Sign Up' in the upper right hand corner.
• Make sure to find our project to attach yourself to
• Once you have done this, you'll need to go back in and Edit your Profile and add a picture if you are joining one of the 'teams'.
  

The more people willing to join teams, the more points for us!
Please sign up your spouses too.

Some people have been trying to join as "team members" and not just as volunteers.  When you get to the screen that says "Volunteer -Lend a Hand to a Project near you" - you have the option to either RSVP for the build day, or Join the planning committee. If you Join the planning committee, you will put on a team, and automatically put in for the build day. If you just rsvp you are not on a team.

Please let Devin know if you get error messages, she can pass them on to Kaboom!

NEWS

We submitted a video to Kaboom for a grant contest. .  The video has been submitted and the documents gathered- Fingers crossed that we will make it to the next round!

In early June, they will pick the top 10 videos (criteria includes interesting video, $$$ need, community support among others).  These will then be posted for 2 weeks of voting. The top 5 videos after the voting will win $15K towards their project.  If you are interested in learning more, check out Kaboom.org

We also had an article about the playground in the Peabody Weekly News.  Hopefully that will help us get some publicity!  It is a great article, though they cut out mention of PTC and how supportive they have been of all our efforts.  Thanks PTC!

Finally we had a Spring Dance- we made over $160 for the playground with raffles and friendship bracelet sales.  Thanks to all who helped.


UPCOMING EVENTS

Playground meeting @ 6pm & Dine Out Night at Wendy's on Rt. 1 from 5-8pm on 5/21.

Barnes and Noble Bookfair on Thursday 5/24- books/games/food purchased all day long can go towards our fundraiser, we'll have activities and story time from 3:30-8, and the online purchasing is open until May 29th.  If anyone has face painting talents or would like to help at Barnes & Noble in any way - reading stories, crafts etc - please let Devin know!