Peoples Church Preschool

Our Nature Explore Classroom continues to be a source of pride and joy for our program. It is often the highlight of our building tours when we are showing the school to prospective families. One of my favorite aspects of my job is to design the environment for the children indoors and out, and it is always fun to make enhancements to our outdoor space.

This year, we had a record turnout for volunteers to participate in our annual Outdoor Classroom Makeover Day (which always turns into a weekend!) We added a number of things this year but the most exciting was our four musical gong flowers. They join our steel drums, bongos, and our sound wall to round out the Music Area.

Other new features this year include a large chalk wall, new materials to use for the magnet wall, a new guard rail for the steps on the ramp wall, additional garden space for more vegetables, a new storage area for water play materials, and the relocation of the outdoor easels and additional storage to more strongly define our Nature Art area.

Finally, we purchased area signs from Nature Explore (we previously had home made ones) to finalize the year’s improvements.

For next year we have two goals – One is to relocate some garden space because growing trees have made the area more shady than we would like, and the other is to add some additional ground surfaces such as limestone or tree cookies.