Wichita Atheists will be holding a special School's Out Picnic on Sunday, May 30 at noon, at Fairmount Park, one block south of the Wichita State University campus. We're holding this event especially for families with kids, who often have trouble making it to weekday meetups and finding sitters. If you have one of those families, your whole family is encouraged to attend. And with school just getting out, we're also especially hoping to get an abundance of teachers, professors and students (hence the location near WSU), to discuss teaching methods that encourage critical thinking. We want to talk about teaching how to think, rather than merely what to think.

Activities
There will be plenty of activities to keep everyone engaged. For the kids, there will be all the playground equipment, the interactive fountains, frisbees, volleyball, and some board games. For adults, there will be the aforementioned discussion about teaching critical thinking. And of course, everyone - kids included - is welcome to chat about whatever else comes to mind. Finally, we'll have a fun debaptism ceremony, for anyone who might have gotten a little wet, and wants to be unsaved.

Location
Fairmount Park is located one block south of the WSU campus. The easiest way to get there is to turn south onto Yale, from 17th, then drive one block. (Note that, due to construction, you can't turn left onto 17th from southbound Hillside.) We will be renting the enclosed shelter on the north side of the park, which will be used for all activities in case of inclement weather. If the weather is nice, we will still base the event out of the shelter, but hold most activities outside. So the show will go on, rain or shine.

What to bring
This will be a potluck picnic, so bring small portions of whatever food or drinks that you wish. If you're bringing kids, bring swimwear and beach towels as well, if you think they might want to play in the fountains. One thing NOT to bring is alcohol. It's disallowed on park property.

Donations
As mentioned, we're renting the enclosed shelter, at a cost of $125. Any help you can provide to defray that expense is greatly appreciated. The suggested, optional donation is $10 per person or family. I have set up a donation mechanism that you can use to donate via PayPal when you RSVP. (Note that when you enter the number of "guests" - in other words, typically family members - you intend to bring along, the donation total will multiply by the added number of people, due to a technical limitation of Meetup.com. Just manually set the total to whatever amount you want.) Due to regulations, I cannot accept cash donations at the park. As always, income and expenditures for the Wichita Atheists will be reflected on the Money page.

RSVPing
Members of Wichita Atheists can RSVP via the RSVP buttons, as normal. Anyone else who wants to RSVP, but doesn't want to create a meetup.com account, can send an email to [masked] to RSVP. State how many people you intend to bring, and I'll add you to my guest list.

- Matt a.k.a. Stacey