Newport Center United Methodist Preschool

Newport Center United Methodist Preschool is blessed with an abundance of outdoor natural space. Children have opportunities daily to explore music and movement, nature art, building areas with natural loose parts/Everlast engineering blocks /ramps, climbing areas, a variety of garden spaces, and sand/water play opportunities.

Our Outdoor Classroom Specialist, Michelle Johnson sets up beautiful nature inspired provocations
throughout the yards. She plans and sets up the materials in variety of ways to inspire creativity while
supporting the development of the whole child. Still life flower paintings, natural herb / flower potion labs on the art patio, group process art (picture example provided), obstacle courses and sports games on the grass are just to name a few! She loves the outdoors and brings anything that can be done indoors outside, and the children love it.

Mrs. Conger, our garden teacher, has continued to grow our amazing gardening program. Children planted kale, lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, and sugar snap peas this year. Harvesting potatoes is happening this month. The children get so excited to find out how many pounds of potatoes their class grew by weighing them!

Nature scavenger hunts, plant care, careful observations of life cycles, learning about pollinators
and native plants have been some of our favorite gardening experiences. The photos we are showcasing this year of our Nature Explore Yards are the pollination garden, that has grown immensely over the last 4 years, our nature pathway, story rock garden, new gazebo gathering
place, completed dry riverbed, and some of our native wildflower garden beds that have been added this year.

The gazebo gathering space has turned into a drum circle, flower shop, animal puppet theatre, look
out point to view pollinators in the garden with binoculars, carshop with and ramps with garages, train
station, cozy nature reading area, and meeting spot for gardening projects.

We hosted a community service event with Boy Scouts from Pack 108 last May where they helped us fill in our dry riverbed with rocks, sandbagged sand for our bike pathways and helped weed our hillside. The dry riverbed is a really nice addition to the natural space near the bridge/story rock garden where teachers and children have painted rocks to encourage picture stories outdoors.
Fundraiser funds from our annual Fall Family Fun Day event have been designated towards renovating the children’s orchard with a fresh pollination garden, we removed old instruments and relocated others to our 3 sensory musical garden walk, ordered natural outdoor furniture for the gazebo in the big yard, purchased more Everlast blocks for the building area in the little yard, added more wooden crates for reading nooks / dramatic play, and purchased new tricycles.

We sent our staff to the National Association for the Education of Young Children Annual Conference where we took many nature inspired workshops. Our entire staff is dedicated to our Nature Explore philosophy with support and enthusiasm. NCUMP families express joy that their children get these amazing learning experiences in nature and how much they value our outdoor program!

Learn more about this classroom on their certification page!