This winter, 4- and 5-year old pupils at Woodstock Nursery School learned how to stand on a snowboard and to shape wood in their classroom at the Unitarian Universalist church in Woodstock. Meanwhile, up the Connecticut River in Orford, middle school students at Rivendell Academy stayed after school to study cartooning, floral design, martial arts and video production.

These new experiences for both groups of students are made possible through enrichment programs that bring parents and community members into the schools on a regular basis to share their expertise.

“If I know somebody who sews, I go to them and say, ‘would you want to teach a sewing workshop?'” said Tammy MacQueen, director of the Visions Afterschool Program for the Rivendell Interstate School District. “Generally if somebody comes and volunteers, they end up coming back.”

The Visions program started five years ago with federal funding through the Vermont Department of Education, but began to expand dramatically two years ago after MacQueen started recruiting community members, including her husband, Jeff. The program, which runs from 3 to 5:30 p.m., now serves an average of 30 students each at the middle school and up to 35 students and 20 students a day at Samuel Morey Elementary School in Fairlee and Westshire Elementary School in Vershire, respectively, she said. The program costs parents $5 a day, though scholarships are available.

For the first hour, Rivendell students in the program do homework, followed by a snack and an hour of a choice of different enrichment activities. Because the activities are so varied -- including Lego building, cooking, gym or mountain biking, they appeal to a wide range of students, said MacQueen. Community volunteers make up the majority of the program staff, along with students from Dartmouth College and the Thayer School of Engineering.

The federal grant will end this year. The program has received funding for the 2009-2010 school year from the Hanover-based Byrne Foundation and is looking at a variety of options, including a student-run school store, to fund the program in the future, MacQueen said.

Like the Visions program, parents and community members are central to enrichment at Woodstock Nursery School. Last week, Mark Lackley, a Woodstock furniture maker and nursery school father, visited with samples of three types of wood to help illustrate a lesson in the five senses. Boards of mahogany, cedar and pine smelled, looked and felt very different and, although they were all the same size, had a very different weight.

His presentation was the latest installment of the schools Explore! program, which began in 2000. The content varies every year depending on input from parents and grandparents, said Clare McFarland, head teacher at the nursery school. The non-profit school serves three-year-olds in the morning on Tuesdays and Thursdays and four- and five-year olds on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings.

Another father, Steve Hayes, an early snowboarder who co-founded Hayes Brothers Snowboards, was a special guest in January. He described how snowboards are made and his experience of an avalanche, and led the children in designing their own graphics for a board and a sticker. And students are looking forward to a visit from farmer Chantal Deojay who plans to bring in cream that the students will churn into butter, said McFarland.

“I think they love the different people just coming through,” McFarland said. “It gives the kids the opportunity to see what is out there and see what other parents are doing.”

Both MacQueen and McFarland said it is easier to find people to contribute than they thought it might be. Both seek out presenters through school newsletters and informal conversations with parents and community members.

That is how MacQueen found people such as Lego leaders Dirk Ussler and Kimberly and Michael Poulin, and Sarah Molesworth, a former kindergarten teacher in the Rivendell district who leads book workshops with the youngest after-school students. Two brothers, Michael and Richard Otis, who are in high school and middle school in the district, now help students at Westshire, their former elementary school, build models of cars and trucks.

But sometimes help comes from even farther afield. After putting the word out that the Visions program was looking for help setting up a rocketry program, MacQueen heard from James Cramton who is renting a house in Orford with his wife. Now he is hooked.

“He's already called me and said, ‘what is our spring budget?'” said MacQueen.

The victory by Timothy Webb of Newbury in this year's Vermont statewide spelling bee held on March 18 was front-page news in these pages. He will go on to represent the state at the Scripps-Howard National Spelling Bee in Washington D.C. in May. Other Upper Valley students who participated in the Vermont spelling bee after winning school and regional bees are Taylor Lamberton of Blue Mountain High School, David Manning Ballou of South Royalton School, Andy Ruddell of Tunbridge Central School and Karen Fan of Windsor State Street School.

Area students who participated in the New Hampshire annual statewide spelling bee, held on Saturday, also after winning regional competitions were Jiyoung Ahn of Maple Avenue Elementary School in Claremont, Jacob Dombroski of Kearsarge Middle School in North Sutton and Cooper Trapp of Piermont Village School. The contest was won by Avvinash Radakrishnar, an eighth-grade student at the Academy for Science and Design in Nashua.

* Eighth-grader Gareth Solbeck will be representing the Indian River School at the 2009 New Hampshire Geographic Bee, to be held at Keene State College on April 3.

The Vermont Geographic Bee will be held on May 16 following regional competitions. Registrations for regional competitions are due by April 6. For more information, visit the Vermont Principals' Association Web site, vpaonline.org. The winner of both state competitions will go on to the national contest at National Geographic Society headquarters in Washington D.C.

The Grafton County Department of Corrections held its third GED graduation ceremony at the Grafton County jail last week. Over the last six months, around 30 inmates have earned their certificates of General Educational Development despite a drop in state funding for the program in New Hampshire.

* Cullen Clark of Enfield is on the president's list for academic achievement at Champlain College in Burlington.

* Benjamin Hawkins of Sunapee and Aarik Devenger of Lebanon earned places on the fall 2008 dean's list at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Mass.

* Hannah Levinger of Norwich was named to the dean's list for the fall semester at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass.

* Fiona Alison Lindsay-Delfino of South Strafford received sophomore honors at convocation held last week at St. Andrews Presbyterian College in Laurinburg, N.C.

* Iain Prendergast of Norwich is on the dean's list for the fall 2008 semester at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo.

Middle School students at The Sharon Academy are presenting a circus on Friday in the high school gym. An hour of carnival games for children will begin at 6 p.m. with the circus performance starting at 7 p.m. Student acts will include juggling, unicycles, balancing, human pyramids and clowning. This is the third time that students have taken two weeks out of the regular school year to work with Troy Wunderle, artistic director of Circus Smirkus, developing a show. This year's theme is a whodunit mystery involving lots of pies-in-the-face scenes. The high school is located off Route 14 in Sharon. Admission is $2. For more information, call (802) 763-2531.

* Vermont FEED (Food Education Every Day) and the Upper Valley Farm to School Network organizations are offering a workshop on “Weaving Farm to School into Your Community” on April 16 at the Billings Farm & Museum in Woodstock. The four-hour program, which runs from 3 to 7 p.m., is aimed at teachers, school administrators, school nurses and members of school wellness committees, food service personnel, farmers, parents, after-school program group leaders and community organizations.

The cost is $25, which includes refreshments and a light dinner. Organizers recommend pre-registration prior to April 3 to reserve a place. For more information, contact Kim Norris at VT FEED, (802) 985-0322 or Peter Allison at UVFTS at (802) 291-2019 or peterallisonvt@gmail.com or visit uvfts.org.

* The Center for School Success is offering a four-day professional development course in June entitled “Understanding the Minds of Struggling Learners.” The course will focus on specific learning functions of the brain and how students' strengths and weaknesses in those areas affect their school performance.

The cost is $650 and can be taken for three graduate credits at Plymouth State University. The course will run on June 25, 26, 29 and 30. For more information, call (603) 298-6700.

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