Tag Archives: fond du lac

Fond du Lac Autism Services Shares with Kiwanians

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Monday Morning

We had 18 members along with our guest speakers, Shannon Schultz and Heather Kraft from the Fond du Lac School District.  A “Happy Buck” was offered by Bob Kahl for their successful sanctuary dedication this past weekend.  Sign-up sheets continued circulating for our Annual Family Christmas Breakfast on Monday, December 16th, our Annual Christmas Party on Thursday evening, December 12th at Steve and Mary Millin’s house and the “Food for Thought” service project at the Fondy Food Pantry on Wednesday evening at St. Paul’s Cathedral.  Del Waldschmidt was the winner of the 50/50 Raffle drawing and he drew the Three of Hearts, another non-winner.  Next week’s game will have 41 cards with eight pay cards and a pot of at least $139.

 Autism Services Fond du Lac Schools

joined us on Monday morning from the Fond du Lac School District.  Shannon is the Program Support person for Autism Services in the entire Fond du Lac School District and has been in this role for the past three years.  Prior to that Shannon was a special education teacher in Fond du Lac and the West Bend School Districts.  Heather Kraft joined Shannon and she is a Speech Language Pathologist that carries a caseload of students in the three to 21 year old range plus she functions as the Program Support person for the District’s speech department.  Shannon led off by thanking our Club for the generous donations of iPads to autistic students in the Fond du Lac School District.  She noted that there are approximately 115 students in the three to 21 year old classification that have an educational diagnosis that places them under the autistic umbrella in the Fond du Lac School District.  This population makes up about 10% of the total special education population of 1,200 students in the Fond du Lac School District.  Shannon and Heather attempted to access a YouTube video that was done by one of their autistic students did that explained the importance of his iPad in his learning process.  Unfortunately that didn’t work so we’ll try to get that link in a future newsletter for everyone to access if they’d like.

 

VEX Wows Kiwanians with Robotics

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Monday Morning

We had 17 members along with our guest speakers, Ken Stephani and his son Joshua and his classmate Bryce.  A “Happy Buck” was offered by Glen Treml for his wife’s recently completed surgery.  Gary Miller is organizing an InterClub to the NFDL Key Club for next Thursday, December 5th at Horace Mann High School at 2:30PM. Check your calendar to see if you can attend.  Sign-up sheets started circulating for our Annual Family Christmas Breakfast on Monday, December 16th and also for our Annual Christmas Party on Thursday evening, December 12th at Steve and Mary Millin’s house.  Chris Serres was the winner of the 50/50 Raffle drawing and she drew the Two of Hearts, another non-winner.  Next week’s game will have 42 cards with eight pay cards and a pot of at least $125.

 VEX Robotics Team

Ken Stephani and his son Joshua and his classmate Bryce joined us on Monday morning to talk about the relatively new VEX Robotics team in North Fond du Lac.  The team is currently made up of ten students and Ken is their current coach.  The robotics team meets every Wednesday after school (around 2:30PM) at Bessie Allen Middle School to work on their robot and fine tune their competition strategy.  The initial robotics kit from VEX Robotics costs about $800 and annual updates or new game attachments can cost anywhere from $200 – $400 per year depending on the game for the year.  The Robotics Club is looking to buy a robotics field in order to practice for their competitions on a surface similar to that used in the competitions.  The cost of the field is approximately $1,500 with another $500 for interchangeable parts to simulate the current year’s game.  Ken talked about the benefits of a robotics team in the local schools as a way to stimulate the students’ interest in math and science with real world design and fabrication.  While the current team is all male Ken is hoping that future teams will include female students as well to help stimulate their interest in science and technology.  Ken also told our Club about how they fund the team.  One of their fund raisers is next Wednesday night, December 4th, at Buffalo Wild Wings.  Go out for dinner and support this excellent team.

Dogs and Reading: An Unlikely Pairing

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Monday Morning

We had 18 members along with our guest speakers, Colleen Sabel, Barb Williams and Steve Williams from Healing Paws Inc.  A “Happy Buck” was offered by Gary Miller to celebrate that his basement wall is hopefully fixed.  VP Gary Miller thanked everyone that attended the Evening Club Spaghetti Dinner to accomplish our InterClub for November.  It looks like we had ten members that made this event.  John Cooper was the winner of the 50/50 Raffle drawing and he drew a Two of Spades, another non-winner.  Next week’s game will have 43 cards with eight pay cards and a pot of at least $114.

Healing Paws, Inc – Paws to R.E.A.D.

Colleen Sabel, Barb Williams and her husband, Steve, along with their dogs Kiki and Taz joined us Monday morning to talk about the Paws to R.E.A.D. program.  Healing Paws, Inc. is a non-profit organization committed to enriching the lives of children and adults in special circumstances, through safe therapeutic interaction with dogs and cats.   The Reading Education Assistance Dogs (R.E.A.D.) program improves children’s reading and communication skills by employing a powerful method: reading to a dog.  R.E.A.D. dogs are registered therapy animals that volunteer with their handler as a team, going to schools, libraries, and many other settings as reading companions for children.  R.E.A.D. utilizes registered therapy animals that have been trained and tested for health, safety, appropriate skills and temperament. When these animals come to hear children read, it’s fun and that makes all the difference!

The local R.E.A.D. volunteers go to several elementary schools in addition to public libraries in Fond du Lac, Lomira, North Fond du Lac, Campbellsport, Brownsville, Ripon and at Quad Graphics.  Public library visits can last anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half while school visits can take up to three hours.  There are current about eight dogs that are registered to participate in the R.E.A.D. program out of the 20 or so dogs that are in the overall Paws for Healing therapy program.  Funding for Healing Paws, Inc. and the R.E.A.D. program come from private donations and fund raisers.