Peoples Church Preschool
Each year our urban nature preschool finds new ways to extend the children’s outdoor learning. One of the things we are proud of this year is that a mother rabbit decided to have her babies in our outdoor space in a relatively small area of tall grass. This is a great honor for an urban preschool that has a play space 25 feet from a major roadway. The children were respectful around the nest and always spoke quietly. Every so often their teacher would move the grass a little so the children could see the young rabbits growing. Once the babies came out and began to hop around, they were relocated to a wildlife rehabber for their safety. We like to think the rabbit chose our space because it is so beautiful and peaceful. A few weeks later, a mother skunk got the same idea.
More unique things about this year are that we had a record number of herbs and flowers planted in our Outdoor Classroom Entrance area. This area includes two picnic tables for the children to work at so they can have experiences in every learning domain. One of our photos this year shows some of our two-year-olds using their fine motor skills to pick up tiny seeds and plant them in the dirt of their pots. Our sunflower garden was very successful this year as we somehow managed to talk the squirrels into letting them grow and not harvesting the seeds until the fall.
