Suncatchers is the brain child of long-time North Guilford resident, Katherine “Kathy” Scott—who founded our program in 1989. Kathy was a young mom and registered nurse (RN) then, with three children of her own. Along with her husband, Jim, the Scott household was a welcoming gathering place for their childrens’ friends and neighborhood kids. As Kathy recalled in a recent Guilford Courier article by Pam Johnson, “On snow days or no-school days, I had 6, 8, 12 kids at my house. And it was a blast! It was so much fun,” she says. “Everybody was good. We did a lot of cool things and it was great.”

Additionally, Kathy was active at Melissa Jones School (MJS), North Guilford’s K4 public school, participating in the PTA progam and assisting with the development of the (then) new playground, a Halloween fundraiser and other initiatives.

When Kathy’s son was kindergarten age, she noticed that in most other households, both parents were going back to work, resulting in a problem: what to do with little ones before and after school. This creates the void commonly known as “latchkey kids”—children leaving and returning to an empty home. This made the Scott’s home the “defacto gathering place” and inspired Kathy’s vision for Suncatchers.

Charlotte Nelson, the MJS Principal at the time, lamented the problem of how kids were simply dropped off before school. Notes Kathy, “There were benches in the front lobby, and these kids would just sit there until school started.” At a 1989 PTA meeting, Kathy heard the (then) new Guilford Superintendent of Schools, Thomas Giblin say something prophetic: “Somebody with an entrepreneurial spirit could take this and run with it.” Suddenly, Kathy’s vision began taking shape.

“I went home, and with an old dot matrix printer, I typed up a four-page proposal for a before-school program, and had it on Charlotte’s and Tom’s desks the next day,” says Kathy. Both Superintendent Giblin and Principal Nelson loved the idea, and worked with Kathy through the summer to develop and implement the program so it would be ready for the start of the new school year. Additionally, Kathy, enlisted the help of a friend and former Montessori School teacher, Claire Hurley to co-lead the program with her. Loosely organized under the oversight of the Board of Education during the first nine years, Suncatchers evolved into a stand-alone operation and service provider—quickly evolving from a morning-only program with a small number of kids into its current, robust, before-and-after-school format.

Kids having fun together while learning life skills became—and remain—the cornerstones of the Suncatchers program. Kathy will proudly tell you that each and every child who has taken part in the Suncatchers experience through the years has likely “learned a thing or two”.

Stations set up throughout the MJS cafeteria offer several different activities, on each given day. During a recent afternoon, kids were choosing between such diverse choices as playgroups, knitting, simple stitching on a sewing machine, building constructs from different mediums, cooking/baking, and making gifts and decorations for whatever the upcoming holiday may be. For several years, a multi-part, rather complicated classic cloth doll-making project was a big hit among many Suncatchers kids, says Kathy. “Often times, when we’re starting a very involved project, they won’t touch it until somebody finishes it—and then they say ‘Oh, I want to do that,’” says Kathy. “And when they are interested in doing something and you let them, they get independent really quickly.”

“It’s such a privilege to be with these kids,” says Kathy. “When Claire and I started this, the first week, we were doing a needle work project and the kids were all working at it so hard. And Claire looked up at me and she had tears in her eyes and she said, ‘I think we should pay the parents for letting us be with them.’”

“My biggest complaint that I’ve ever had from parents is that their kids want to come all the time, and they never want to leave. It’s a neighborhood. It’s a big family,” says Kathy, adding, “It’s just a lot of fun, and the kids are enthusiastic, because they’re doing what they want,” she says.