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| Sunday, December 27, 2020
HOW TO TURN
3 MONTHS INTO 20 YEARS
Kid Time Director Sunny Spicer still navigating the ebbs and flows of changing needs By Buffy Pollock for the Mail Tribune
S
unny Spicer, director of Kid Time Children’s Museum in Medford, never envisioned herself as a champion for early childhood development. By the time she was recruited in 2002 to “help out for three months,” Kid Time had existed since establishing nonprofit status in 1998. With a background in campaigning and nonprofits, the Oregon native planned to follow in the lawyerly footsteps of her dad. Hired to help with grant writing and to organize events to rally community support for a discovery museum, Spicer had no idea she would see the effort through to fruition — much less be the virtual “glue” of the organization nearly two decades later. “I like to joke that this has been the longest three months of my life,” Spicer said. “I was going to jump in and then leave. I didn’t know anything about children’s museums at the time, so I set out to learn more and realized how much of a need there was for this place that was being dreamed up. It was so important.” Kid Time, which closed March 13, in response to the novel coronavirus, also committed to helping families
ANDY ATKINSON / MAIL TRIBUNE
Sunny Spicer walks through a new kindergarten space at the new Kid Time location in downtown Medford.
Kid Time, which closed March 13, in response to the novel coronavirus, also committed to helping families that are sheltering at home with the “Kid Time: Home Edition” initiative, a program that includes videos and activities to keep kids engaged at home. that are sheltering at home with the “Kid Time: Home Edition” initiative, a program that includes videos and activities to keep kids engaged at home. “This past year has brought
us so many trials and tribulations. Challenges we never thought we would face. Yet through it all, the kids still bring so much love and enthusiasm to all that they do,” Spicer said. “Their
resilience, their compassion for each other, their ability to look past the things that don’t matter will be one of the driving forces that inspire me and so many of us through the next phase of Kid Time’s evolution.” Imaginative activity, dubbed “free-play” by scientists, is a vital component in proper brain development, Spicer explained, actually changing the way the brain is wired. “It’s long been proven that kids who engage in free-play build a foundation for success not only in school but,
ultimately, for their entire life,” she said. “So we built something that was definitely nontraditional by way of children’s museums, but also that would fit our Rogue Valley.” Founded by a board of directors in the late 1990s, Kid Time supporters rallied for four years to create an operations plan and establish community partnerships. When it was time to hit the road and share Kid Time with future patrons, Spicer contributed everything from vision and manual labor.
