Mariemont Community Church (web annex)

      First, they painted rooms, collected tables and June Cross’ first husband, Carl Weigleine, helped build and repair shelving units. Basically, they scrounged for whatever they could find and brought a lot of the furnishings from their homes.
     After getting the rooms decorated and furnished, the staff needed to make structural changes. At that time, the restroom located between the blue and green rooms was not accessible from the green room. The women realized that the children attending class in the green room would have to enter the restroom from the blue room. This was a dangerous and inconvenient situation. So, Carl cut out a section of the wall in the green room to create a door. That is why a Jack-and-Jill restroom exists, allowing the children to have two entrances. After making the door, another problem existed with regards to the restroom. At that time, the two sinks in the restroom were adult size, and the children couldn’t reach the faucets to wash their hands. To solve the problem, Carl built a wooden platform under both sinks and built steps so the children could reach the sinks.
     The next issue at hand was where the children were going to put their art work and papers. Carl drilled holes throughout the hallway, and the staff installed buckets. The buckets were color-coded by class groups. The children that came on Monday-Wednesday-Friday had green buckets, the Tuesday-Thursday class had yellow buckets and the afternoon children had red buckets. It sounds unbelievable, but I know this to be true because the holes still exist.
     Now that the classrooms were ready, the staff needed an office area. At that time, the preschool office that exists today was a storage room, and a bowling alley was located in the large muscle room. So, they moved into the bowling alley attendant’s booth. It was a small cubical with glass windows. JoAnne placed a desk, a cabinet to hold the children’s files, and a phone inside the booth and proclaimed it as the preschool office. The booth also served as a check-in area for parents dropping off their children. Next to the booth was a table where staff had meetings and ate their lunch. This area, where the preschool office once was located, is known today as the toddler classroom next to the church nursery.
     Everything was finally in place and ready to go, except for the most important part. The women needed to decide what kind of curriculum would be utilized, what style of teaching they would use and what would be their purpose. JoAnne had started and taught at a Montessori school in Delhi. She already had the teaching materials and background education. So, she ordered toys and learning materials from Denmark, organized the curriculum, and the women declared MCCP a Montessori-based preschool.
     Up until 1981, there were only two classrooms that the preschool occupied. However, in 1986, a classroom was built that enclosed the north area of the muscle room. Debbie Wiley, MCCP’s director from 1984-1987, and staff felt there was a strong need for an all-day preschool class to help meet the needs of parents working full-time. The children attended school three days a week, from 9:00am to 3:00pm, brought their own lunches and took naps. This class successfully functioned for four years. However, in 1991, it became apparent that the interest for all-day childcare had diminished, and that the preschool was not meeting the needs of the parents to its full potential. The parents began to express their interest in wanting more days a week, but only at half days. Debby Welsh, MCCP’s director from 1989-1999, and the staff decided it would be more effective to remove the walls of the existing classroom and create a new class, called the “4-day-4s”, in the south area of the muscle room. This decision helped to redefine the preschool. It allowed more space for the children to play and allowed better traffic flow for the parents.
     The next big event was the installation of windows in the green room, which also took place in 1991. At that time, the green room was extremely dark because there were no windows in the front room. So, Debby Welsh had several fathers install windows in the wall that faces the hallway leading to the blue room. This renovation allowed more light to enter the classroom.
     Remember the buckets that were used for the children to place their personal items? Well, in 1991 they were removed from the hallways and cubbies were installed. Debby Welsh felt the buckets were unsafe, due to the protruding eye-level nails used to hang them on the walls. The cubbies were placed near the entrance of the preschool and in the hallway leading to the blue room. The cubbies located near the teachers’ restroom were built later, in 1995.
     Also, in 1995, the green room underwent many improvements. The sinks and the cupboards were remodeled, and the countertop was lowered so the children could reach it. Also, up until then, the children had to use the wooden steps to reach the sinks in the bathroom located between the green and blue rooms. So, the bathroom was remodeled. The sinks were lowered, countertop replaced and automatic faucets were installed.
     An enormous and unexpected renovation took place in 2001 when the preschool flooded! All the carpets were removed and replaced with new tiling. Donna Sacks, the preschool director from 1999 to 2002, bought three large decorative carpet pieces to place on the new classroom floors.
   In 2002, it became apparent that the preschool needed to be spruced up with color. With the help of the current director, Renee Roberts, the staff and many helpful parents, the walls were decorated with beautiful murals and scripture verses, and all the shelving units were painted with bright cheerful colors that matched the carpet pieces. In the blue room, hot air balloons, airplanes and clouds were painted. In the bathroom, colorful fish, a shark and octopus were painted. In the green room, trees, forest animals, birds, and butterflies were painted. And, in the muscle room, flowers and ladybugs were painted, along with the scripture verse Matthew 19:14: “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” In the 4-day-four-year-old room, big hearts were painted along with the words “Smile, God loves you.” The preschool definitely became a bright and cheerful Christian atmosphere, reflecting the attitudes of the director and staff. But perhaps the most significant design work located in the preschool area is the decorative flowers on the preschool office door, accompanied by the bible verse, Matthew 19:26: “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”