Let Your Children Have Some Fun While You Finish Up Last Minute Holiday Preparations

Parents of young children, this is an event designed especially for you!

If you find yourself on Dec. 22 with some last-minute shopping or just a desperate need for some quality downtime, there is relief for you!

Located at the Madison Arts Barn, Erika Klaskin is providing a fun place for parents to drop off their kids while preparing  for the holidays.

You will not only be helping yourself, but you will be helping support children with cancer through Circle of Care and Dances with Wood — two charities she is raising money for as a part of her Bat Mitzvah charity project.

Circle of Care, on their website, states, “Our Mission is to provide immediate and ongoing peer support to families of children with cancer.”

Dances with Wood, provides children with woodworking kits to do while undergoing cancer treatments. “The creative self-expression of woodworking helps to heal the spirit and reveals to a child his or her own individuality, inner beauty and competence. Each project can be undertaken while sitting or lying in a hospital bed,” the website states.

If Klaskin’s first date for this event, Nov. 24, was an indication, this project is a raging success. The Polson Middle School 7th-grader was joined by her mother, Robyn, Madison Arts Barn's Amber Schwarm,  family friend Amy Johnson, and a few of Klaskin’s friends.

The day included:

• Air hockey games  
• Craft projects with paper, glue, glitter and paint
• Dances With Wood projects
• Chutes and Ladders
• Scavenger Hunt
• Movies "Lilo and Stitch" and "Madagascar"

One parent who spoke highly of the event was Guilford’s Joshua Hatton. “It worked out perfectly for us that we’re helping Riki Klaskin out with her Bat Mitzah project and we had some adult time to take care of some business that our kids would have zero interest in,” said Hatton.

The best review of this event is from the kids themselves. Klaskin and Hatton echoed the same sentiment when summing up how the children reacted to the day.

“They had a ton of fun,” said Hatton. “Coming back to pick them up, the first thing she  (his younger daughter) said was, ‘I don’t want to leave yet’ and, as we were leaving, she said was ‘we have to come back, this place is so cool!”

This was not only felt by Hatton’s daughter, but by many of the children who joined Klaskin at the Arts Barn.

“They didn’t want to leave,” said Klaskin.  “They were telling their parents that they didn’t want to go!”

December 22, 2012

2 p.m. – 6 p.m.

$5.00/hour per child

$2.50/hour per additional sibling

Sign up on www.madisonartsbarn.com under the buy event tickets tab or send an email to madisonartsbarn@gmail.com.