Bridging the Gap: Pine Plains Kids Club Offers Creative Play After School

By 3 p.m. on a recent Tuesday, artist Jeremiah Jones and Stissing Mountain High School junior Mercy Tindall had set out the material for Kids Club at the Pine Plains Library. Today, that’s Magic Clay, a Crayola product that comes in primary colors and can be massaged together to make new colors, then molded to air dry into whatever youngsters’ imagination told their hands to do. 

Jones has already placed a few whimsical clay statues around the table to inspire the kindergarteners to fifth-graders who will arrive around 3:30. When one student entered, she asked Jones how he made the flowers on display. “Just make little thumbprints, then piece them together,” he explained, demonstrating.  

It’s Kids Club, the program started by the library last month to help bridge the time between 3., when school lets out, and 4., when sports and dance and other afterschool programs begin. “We started with a request from a parent who said they needed something for their child to do after school,” said library director Dee Ann Campbell. She started a program as a pilot in September, Mondays through Thursdays, from 3:30 to 4:30. Tuesdays are art, but Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays are largely unstructured. 

“I’ll set out board games, puzzle games and Play-Doh, and it’s basically up to the kids to do what they want to do,” said Tindall, who was hired by the library to help manage Kids Club. There may also be stations set out for STEAM (Technology, Science, Engineering, Art, Math) toys, building toys, drawing materials, chess boards and Nugget modular furniture. “The kids are really creative, and every kid is different,” said Tindall. 

The Tuesday art program, which attracts about a dozen students each week, came about by chance. Both Campbell and Jones live in Red Hook. “Dee Ann lives down the street from me, so my dog sometimes plays with her dog,” said Jones. “She started talking about this idea, and I thought it was really cool. Turns out it pays, too, which is nice as an artist.” 

Jones is a skilled animator and artist who, when he lived in New York City, taught youth art at the Guggenheim, MoMA and the American Folk Art museum. He also ran educational programs at the Brooklyn Museum. Now he teaches animation at Dutchess Community College and in afterschool programs through an organization called The Art Effect in Poughkeepsie. (He also creates animations for the Laurie Berkner band, a children’s musical group, including the most recent one, Walking With The Penguins.) 

One of the challenges of Kids Club, Jones explained, is that you never know what age the children who show up will be. “So you have students who have been taking art classes, and they’ll let you know that they know how to do everything,” he said. “But then another child may need more guidance. Everyone brings their own skill level.” 

“I love that Jeremiah reads books to the kids,” said Lori Douglas, who lives in Jackson Corners and brought her two daughters, Freya, who’s in kindergarten, and Tegan, who’s in third grade, for some art play before their after school dance program starts. Jones incorporates a book each week into the art theme. “We read a book on monsters and shapes, so that week we used paper-cut pieces to create monster creatures based on the book,” he said. Another week, a book about a wood carver led into a block printing class using foam and ink. “The kids made some pretty cool stuff.”  

The program gives parents a break, too. “You can drop them off and do errands in town,” Douglas said. Currently, the program is only available to parents who can transport their kids — or arrange for another responsible adult to do so. “I would really like to expand it so kids could walk from school,” said Campbell, “but we have to get a crosswalk put in first.” The town of Pine Plains has been investigating the feasibility of putting in crosswalks, including across Main Street to the library, to improve walkability.

One thing is clear: Kids Club is here to stay. “We piloted it through December to make sure people liked it,” Campbell said. “We paid for it through general library funds.” To keep it going, she applied for and received a $3,000 grant through the SEED, an education enrichment fund for the Pine Plains Central Educational District, which uses private philanthropic funds and is managed by the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation. “That will help fund us through the end of this coming school year,” Campbell said. It will pay for Tindall, for Jones, for materials, for snacks and for other costs. The grant may not cover all the costs through next June, but it will cover most of them. The library plans to reapply for a SEED grant and perhaps other grants for the 2025–2026 school year. 

The library is also seeking a part-time youth program coordinator. When that position is filled, the new coordinator can supervise Kids Club — a task that Campbell is currently performing — and handle many other duties, such as Saturday programs. 

While Campbell is proud of the art program, she also believes that the free atmosphere on other days has great value, too. “Kids just like to play, right?” she said. “Everything is so organized, so programmed today, so it’s good to let them do whatever they want. I keep it unstructured, so they can just blow off steam. We’re constantly updating our scavenger hunts, because they just love them.” For parents of children in the Pine Plains school district, who are interested in Kids Club for their children, there’s no application and no cost. Just show up. 

While Campbell was explaining the program, a young girl walked by with the multicolored Magic Clay object on her finger. When asked what it was, she replied, quite seriously, “It’s a tie-dye monster — and a puppet, too.”