Kingsdown Pre-School has won the top £8,000 prize in a KM token offer to make a dream come true and create a new play area for its base in the village hall.

Lisa Dennison, chairman of the pre-school committee, said: "We haven’t stopped grinning since we received the good news!

"We were absolutely thrilled to win the competition. We launched a major token collecting campaign throughout the village and beyond, and had fantastic support from the local community but we didn’t dream for a second that we would actually win!"

Five schools and nurseries in the Deal and Sandwich area competed to win the £8,000 top prize against many schools across Kent and Rainbow Pre-School at St Richard’s Church, Deal, came third, winning £500.

Andrew Lofting, project and sales manager for Canterbury-based Specialist Sport Products, which offered a total of £10,000 in prize money, was pleased to see the two prizes going to two schools in the Deal area.

He said: "I am absolutely over the moon for them and it has been very rewarding for our company to take part in this token offer.

"I am so delighted Kingsdown won. It is a little village preschool that meets in a village hall and there is always a limit to how much fundraising can be done for a village hall.

"The pre-school collected 5,500 tokens and, with only 40 children, they worked really hard with the community. It just showed what can be achieved - even a Facebook page was set up."

Schools had to collect special tokens in KM editions and the totals were judged on a pro rata basis to pupil head-counts to find the winner of the £8,000 top prize, the £1,500 second prize and the £500 for the third place.

* See the East Kent Mercury, May 17, page one and four for more photos and words about the successes.