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WILKES-BARRE — It was bingo without the B-I-N-G-O, it was Twister with, well, some pretty big change.
“Left hand quarter,” Wilkes University Senior Aislinn Speranza announced after spinning the needle, and four youngsters in the SHINE after-school program at Heights Murray Elementary dutifully set left foot on one of the six oversized quarters stuck to what had been a traditional Twister mat.
“Right foot quarter” was easy, and “right hand nickel” didn’t seem too taxing, but “right foot quarter” caused a serious stretch of some short legs, and the effort knocked a few coins free from the mat. Thus the change became, literally, loose.
Speranza was one of several students from Wilkes’s Sidhu School of Business and Leadership volunteering to give some simple money lessons to the students in SHINE, a program funded through a mix of public and private money with Wilkes as a partner.
SHINE Executive Director Carol Nicholas said this was the start of a new effort to involve students from all of Wilkes’ departments in the after-school program. Next up, she said, are students from the nursing program.
Along with the money version of Twister, students got to play a game in pairs racing to put 15 cents worth of plastic pennies and nickles onto a card, taking turns spinning a paper clip that pointed to how much they could add each turn. Jacob Faison announced he beat Bianca Hernandez “by five cents.”
So, by a nickel, right?”
“By a nickel,” he confirmed.
Was Bianca going to win the next game? “Yeah,” she insisted, even as he simultaneously disagreed. “No.”
For the record, he won all three games before they headed off to Twister.
Back at the mat game, one group of four students were finishing up their final round when Meghan Vargas and Kimora Nelson hit on a winning scheme: Holding each other up. With one foot on the penny and the other heading across the mat, the found themselves face to face, wrapped arms around each other and grinned at the success.
“Thanks, Meghan!” Kimora said.
Maybe someday they will be business partners.
