GiggleBugs center prepares to open

With a little help from the horticulture students at Indian River High School, GiggleBugs Early Learning Center is in its final phases before a planned June 1 opening date.

Providing programs and child care for students ranging from infants to adolescents, Jennifer and Rich Spinks, owners of the the $1.3 million, 7,500-square-foot facility on West State Street in Millsboro, said they have already received as many as 60 fully completed applications from their list of 135 preregistered students.

Leaving behind three similar early learning centers in West Virginia, Jennifer, a Dagsboro native, returned to Delaware with Rich more than a year ago to put plans in action for an early childhood education center in her home state.

The process of opening a learning center in Delaware, they agreed, has taken much longer than it did in West Virginia, but Jennifer, a graduate of Indian River High School and Salisbury University, said she's looking forward to bringing their experience in education to children in Sussex County.

Before relocating to Rich's home state of West Virginia after their marriage, Jennifer said, she worked as an elementary school teacher in Maryland. For a total of 13 years she taught public school before the couple opened their first early learning centers, DoodleBugs, to accommodate a statewide mandate for universal prekindergarten in West Virginia.

While Jennifer concentrates on the educational aspects of GiggleBugs, Rich said his background in business allows him to run the administrative aspects.

"What we are doing here is a little different than daycare," Rich said, explaining the educational emphasis at GiggleBugs may help to foster collaborations with Head Start and the Indian River School District.

So far, the owners said they have collaborated with IRSD to provide busing from East Millsboro Elementary School to GiggleBugs for after-school programs.

But even before the learning center opens, the IRSD alumni offered agricultural science students from the classrooms of Indian River High School's Teacher of the Year, Jennifer Cordrey, a learning opportunity courtesy of a field trip to GiggleBugs where they helped to plan and plant landscaping.

Cordrey said she was glad to get the students out of the classroom on a temperate spring day and put their academics to work in a real-world situation.

"It gives them ownership," she said. "This is something they will see and remember for years."

IRHS senior Brandon Almony said he felt his classmates and the future students at GiggleBugs could benefit from the experience.

"I feel it is great for the community, and it's really giving the young kids a great perspective," Almony said. "It also gives students in the Indian River agriculture department an incentive to work hard and better the image of their school and academics."

GiggleBugs is located in a fully secured facility with video and pass codes for parents dropping off their children or picking them up each day. Jennifer said the facility will provide meals and snacks based on statewide dietary recommendations, and each student is admitted only after a thorough application process alerting the facility of any medical, dietary or custodial restrictions.

Summer camps are slated to begin June 15 and applications for the early learning center are available online.

For more information about GiggleBugs early learning center, call 302-934-KIDS (5437) or go to www.gigglebugs.net.