Hats Off To SMART Kids At Head O’Meadow

By Laurie Borst

For the past 16 years, the SMART program has been offered to Newtown’s school children during the summer months. SMART (Summer Music and Arts Program) presents classes in a variety of art, music, movement, and science topics.

This year, the program is being held at Head O’ Meadow School. Courses offered include Clay Creations, Adventure Safari, Modern Dance, Yoga, Icky Sticky Chemistry, and Native American Art, et al.

One of the courses is “Daphne’s Hat Shoppe.” This course, in its second year, was designed and named in honor of Daphne Gibney, a long-time employee of Newtown Schools and Continuing Education, who passed away last year after battling cancer. Ms Gibney was known for her love of hats.

In this course, participants work with a variety of types of hats, decorating them as they wish. At the end of the two-week course, the youngsters will select hats they have made which will be donated to children undergoing cancer treatment at Hartford’s Children’s Hospital.

The course is facilitated by Marianne Mulvaney, an ABA tutor who has run programs for Danbury’s Escape to the Arts and is the founder of the Centipede Artist Co-op. She is assisted by Newtown High School junior, Kristen Brassard.

During the course, the girls personalized pointed princess hats, floppy hats, tiaras, sun hats, visors, headbands, and fuzzy “monster” hats. In one session, the girls learned to embroider, drawing designs with marker on baseball caps and embellishing them with running stitch. At another session, they made origami bishops hats.

When asked how they enjoyed the class, a din arose, punctuated with “I love this class!”, “it’s so much fun!,” and “Awesome!”

“This is a great group of kids,” said Ms Mulvaney, adding “the interns are an amazing group. They make SMART camp what it is.”

The SMART program is overseen by Newtown Continuing Education.