The P.E.A.C.E. Projects is an initiative to sponsor and mentor early childhood educators, in promoting peace education for young children in the classroom.

P.E.A.C.E. Projects 2023

By Heather Tucker

We, Lighthouse Preschool, were awarded the P.E.A.C.E. mini grant in December 2022. We were incredibly surprised, thankful, and excited for the funds given to us to benefit our preschool playground. This grant was a huge blessing to our program.

The first thing we did once awarded was make a list of all the items necessary for the Music and Pipe walls. We then went shopping for the big materials (wooden fencing, hardware, magnets, pipe, sheet metal, glue) at Home Depot. We had hoped to also create a better mud kitchen for the playground as well, but that was dependent upon whether there was enough money left over to do so. The music wall was honestly a very easy and fun project to see through.

We shopped for materials needed to create “music” and other cool sounds. Ross and Good Will stores was where the magic happened. It was fun hitting different items such as pots and pans at these stores to see what sound each “musical” item projected. Two of the preschool dads volunteered to help put up the music wall for us. It has made a beautiful addition to our playground. The children truly enjoy playing on it and exploring all the wonderful sounds each unique item makes.

We then worked on the pipe wall. The pipe wall was unfortunately a little harder to complete, as we found that magnets were very hard to keep stuck to the pipes. However, after a few purchases of various types of magnets and gluing materials, we finally discovered that two-part epoxy did the job! One of the preschool dads installed the sheet metal for us and applied a soft bumper around it to prevent the children from hurting themselves on it. He also cut various sized pipes for us, sanded them down a bit and eventually applied the two-part epoxy with a magnet to make the pipes stick to the wall.

Overall, our preschool children have enjoyed exploring this all. They are excited to create ramps and paths for balls to venture through. It’s been so neat to see their imagination run wild as they discover what this wall is capable of.

Thank you so much for blessing us with the grant. Although the funds only allowed us to do the pipe and music walls, we are forever grateful. Our students and teachers are very happy to have these new additions to our outside play areas. We appreciate your willingness to allow us to create and enhance our program.