MINOT – Parents with children too old for day care but too young to leave home alone for the summer have a new option at the Minot Summer Enrichment Program.

Thirty-eight children are saying that hanging out with their friends and doing things is better than sitting at home.

“There aren’t many friends who live around my house,” said Randi Edwards, 11. “When my mom found out about this, I said, Yeah! Sure! I’ll go.”

The newly established seven-week program offers weekly field trips, martial arts, hip-hop dance lessons, art and music activities, health and drug-abuse education sessions, and sports clinics for Minot kids going into fifth through eighth grade. It operates three days a week.

Orianna Brown, 11, spent an hour Wednesday afternoon stretching to a Pilates routine while another group practiced karate kicks and counted in Japanese. Besides the varied weekly activities, Brown said her favorite part of the program was going places.

“Aquaboggin was a lot of fun,” said Brown, who said she spent last summer either at home or in day care while her parents worked. “Next week, we get to go to Funtown.”

For working mom Penny Bourgoin, the new program relieves a lot of the worry and guilt of leaving her 11-year-old son at home.

“They get to do all the things that I would like to be doing with my children and try to cram in on the weekends,” said Bourgoin. “I think this is really a fabulous program that keeps my son involved and connected with his friends and going in the right direction.”

“My first thought when school let out was, what am I going to do with him this summer?” said Lisa Cesare, referring to her 11-year-old son. “The first two weeks after school he was already complaining about being bored. Now he’s being kept very busy, and he’s learning a lot of new things.”

The thought of kids spending too much time with the television, on the phone, or unsupervised on the Internet inspired Katie Paiton of Minot, mother of two, to come up with an alternative.

“My original goal was to have something that would let kids establish bonds and help each other resist peer pressures before they go off to high school,” Paiton said. “I saw a real need for kids to be with their friends, especially out here where we’re spread so far apart. But they needed to be doing something positive together.”

Paiton, who is majoring in social and behavioral sciences at University of Southern Maine, had thought about starting a program for the past three years. She said she never had the courage until this year.

Parents and local businesses overwhelmingly supported the idea. Cesare and Gail Reid helped Paiton develop the program, and Statia Ackerman joined forces to coordinate fund-raisers and donations. Before opening day on July 6, community members and business owners contributed about $4,000 to get the program off the ground.

The cost for the program is $300 per child. The program was able to offer scholarships for five children. It was also able to pay directors Jennifer French and Heidi Strait, who are teachers, and two college assistants from Minot.

The program is able to take advantage of the Minot Consolidated School building and buses to keep overhead low and enrollment affordable for parents, Cesare said.

Positive feedback from parents and kids halfway into the first year has some of the local mothers thinking about expanding the enrichment program through the year for after-school hours and becoming a nonprofit organization to take advantage of outside funding, Paiton said.