Restaurants from all over East County lined the walls of the Lakeside Community Center. Tables were set for guest and an impressive array of silent auction items filled four tables as people came in to support A Child’s Center of Wonder and Discovery Center, a pre-school run at the Community Center for 12 years now. In the hallways, awaiting silent auction, were masterpieces of art all created by the 3-5-year olds attending the pre-school. These 10 pieces of art performed well in the live auction, with the buying range between $240 and $310 per piece. Along with the auction, ACCWD provided slideshows that showed how the children, with some extremely creative supervision, created these works of art.
Harriet Whitmore, A Child’s Center of Wonder and Discovery director said its mission is to keep fees as low as it can and the quality as high as it can, which is why they hold the annual Taste & Toast benefit. It now serves 78 families.
“We offer scholarships to everyone that qualifies,” she said. “This is in addition to keeping our fees as low as possible.”
Whitmore said it is important to realize that ACCWD is not a childcare facility, it is a pre-school and the children come for three hours a day. She said the way they manage this many children is that some are Monday, Wednesday, Friday students and others are Tuesday, Thursday students.
She said this year was its 10th Annual Taste & Toast event and without it they would not be able to fund the scholarships for children. She also said that all monies generated from the benefit go directly back into the school.
“Everything you see here tonight was put together by myself and my staff,” she said. We do not hire anyone to help with the event, it is all done in-house, but we do solicit donations from local restaurants from all of East County and donations from anywhere we can get them.”
She said her favorite were the painting, all done by the 3, 4 and 5-year-old students and up for live auction. People, who gained the paintings through auction, also received a collage of photos of the children painting the particular piece.
“These paintings are authentic, no teacher’s hands allowed,” she said.
A non-profit preschool, Child’s Center of Wonder and Discovery works with three teachers with 12 students at a time. Its vision came Whitmore who left as the Lakeside School District Pre-school director to begin her own pre-school in Lakeside.
“I went to El Capitan, my children went to El Cap and I am a Lakeside girl,” she said.
For more information on the programs at ACCWD, its history and availability visit www.accwd.com.
