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Presenting: Educational programs relating to kids with disabilities or differences. We are waiting and ready to visit - Your School!

Information: Call the Special Needs Support Center of the Upper Valley office at 603-448-6311 or the KOB Coordinator Ann Justice at 603-795-2105 for further information or scheduling.

We offer short amusing skits, usually two or three in a performance, which are both educational and informative. After each skit the audience is invited to ask the puppets questions.

See the "Kids on the Block" in action: (Windows Media) (QuickTime)

Packets of activities to be used in the classroom as preparation and/or follow-up are included:

	The puppets have names, families, and friends just the way you and I do; the only difference is that they also have some challenges that not everyone shares.
	The puppets help to promote understanding and overcome difficulties through their insight and suggestions.

Skits Available

Visual Impairment Cerebral Palsy Spina Bifida Mental Retardation/Down Syndrome Autism Emotional Disburance Tobacco, Alcohol, Drugs Bullies and School Safety Multiculturalism Healthy Snacking

Asthma Childhood Cancer Diabetes ADHD Child of Divorced Parents Learning Disabilities Epilepsy Sexual Abuse Physical Abuse Obesity

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This year the SNSC Board of Directors took the farsighted and financially courageous step of offering the KOB performance at no cost to schools. For the last three years or so, the requests for performances have dropped off considerably; and the thinking was that this was due either to the strapped financial situation of schools and/or the overload of the testing mandates taking up excessive amounts of school time. The plan was to apply to foundations for grants to fund the New Hampshire performances outside the Upper Valley (where the UVUW already provides financial support). Unfortunately, no grants have yet been obtained, but we will keep trying - as the number of performance requests increased significantly this year seemingly by making them free to schools.

The seven volunteer puppeteers (Ann Justice-Coordinator, Judy Thrasher, Bev Strout, Barbara Payson, Merry Converse, Barbara Whitman, and Janet Eller) continued their dedicated efforts to provide these educational and informative puppet performances to elementary school students on topics of disabilities and childhood social issues. These 10-15 minute skits enlighten students about living a life with a disability or other differences. Students are challenged to think in more depth about the problem of bullying, autism, drug use, cancer, etc. (we offer 25 different skits) with the puppet performances stimulating positive dialogue between students and school staff. Classroom educational materials for additional classroom discussions are made available to school staff for use either in advance and/or after the puppet performance on the topic presented.

These seven volunteers commit one day a week during the school year to Kids on the Block. In spite of serious health problems for two of them, the troupe carried on in their grand style again this year. And late this year, with a grant from the Anderson Family Foundation, we purchased a set of three skits and one new puppet on the topic of "Coping with Crisis, War, and Family Deployment. This set of skits was created recently by the national KOB organization to address the challenges in the USA to post 911 issues, like Arab-Americans in the US, and families of armed forces being sent overseas to war. The troupe looks forward to learning these new scripts and presenting them next year.

The number of schools that had performances increased by 50% to 21. In each school from two to three skits were given to a class, with some schools having performances to three or four classes in a day. Therefore, audience numbers really increased - from 975 last year to 2311 this year. A total of 1992 miles were driven to make these performances possible; from Lebanon and White River Jct. to Rochester and Rye in east NH, to Stewartstown NH in the far north to Hudson and Derry in southern NH, and many places in between.

There was a total of 42 shows given in the 21 school venues with 48 different skits performed. Audience size ranged from 15 to 288. The number of skit performances in order (greatest to least); Bullying (23), Snacking (4), Learning Disabilities (4), Spina Bifida (2), CP (2), Down syndrome (2), Autism (2), Divorce (2), Abuse (2), Multiculturalism (1), Blind (1), ADHD (1), Epilepsy (1), Cancer (1).

In summary, we were pleased with the increased number of requests for KOB performances this year, and in the number of skits performed at each school. It will be interesting to see the reaction to the new skits and how they are requested. One concern we have is the long distance to some of the schools on the "other side" of the state of NH and the feasibility of continuing to try to service them because of the long distance and time involved in travel. We will be reviewing this before publicizing the program next year and will probably limit the distance involved. Another push next year will be for more presentations here in the Upper Valley that dropped off this year. And, we will continue to seek grant funding in order to continue the practice of offering the performances at no cost to schools and groups.

Visit the National Office of Kids on the Block for infomation on other Kids on the Block programs throughout the nation.

Email: kob@nhsupport.net

Kids on the Block IS supported by United Way and other local organizations and private donors.

Parent to Parent of New Hampshire You are not alone....we have been there.

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The Parent to Parent of New Hampshire homepage address is http://www.parenttoparentnh.org