Look What’s Growing In A Classroom On Goffe

The romaine, zucchini, and radishes were going in, along with bright orange marigolds. 

So were plastic ​“squooshies” of worms, lime-green butterflies, black-dotted ladybugs, and other creatures that pre-schoolers can now bury in the dirt and then dig up, not months hence at harvest time, but within seconds, and then call out a loud ​“surprise” at the remarkable re-finding of the object.

Both kinds of plantings — and the complementary kinds of learning that result — are necessary when your garden is also a lovely outdoor classroom for the 500 pre-schoolers at the Dr. Reginald Mayo Early Childhood School at 185 Goffe St.

On a sunny Tuesday morning several lucky classes were on hand, with school Principal Monique Brunson, to cut the blue ribbon and inaugurate the first day of outdoor learning in the spacious fenced in area that features a dozen raised beds, several little kid green outdoor picnic-style tables, and lots of open space right in front of the school.

“Play is the language of children,” said Brunson, now in her fifth year leading the school. ​“Play helps to regulate your emotions, helps you practice roles and behaviors useful in life.”

The kids already have some raised beds and mud areas in back of the school and growing areas in their classrooms as well where they play and have units on plants. 

“Now they have a large outside classroom,” Brunson said, to learn how to take care of something and watch it grow, and with that play, she added, a corollary behavior: ​“How to take care of yourself and other living things.”

As five-year-old Amani Zeno dug a ladybug out of the dirt, Robyn Stewart, kneeling beside her, asked her how many colors it displayed. And how many dots?

When another even littler kid, Josiah, digging around in one of the beds, called out that he found the ​“squooshy” toy worm (which everyone had spotted earlier on top of the soil but somehow had been buried), Stewart explained: ​“They’re learning ​‘object permanence.’ That is, kids learn a thing is there even though you can’t see it. That’s why kids like peekaboo.”

Stewart should know. For ten years she has been the manager of the Schoolyards program, which operates out of Common Ground High School. More than 20 schools participate, coming up to Common Ground’s spacious farm, compost site, and woods for visits with the chickens, walks in the forest, sheep shearing, outdoor cooking and other earth-based activities.

The Mayo School has a particularly close relationship to Common Ground with the entire student body coming up at least four times a year. Stewart consulted on the construction of Mayo’s outdoor classroom, as she has on other similar facilities around the city. 

An enthusiast for the superiority of a yard like this one over a standard playground, Stewart grows elegiac: ​“Playgrounds [with swings and slides, etc] are wonderful, but they’re limiting. How many times can you go down a slide?” she asked rhetorically, pointing out that when you go up it the wrong way there’s a good chance a kid will be reprimanded.

“Here [in the gardening-based outdoor classroom] they can do whatever they want, find bugs and worms, plant a seed and watch it grow. And they’re learning about geometry, biology, chemistry, and life.”

Funds for the project materials were raised by volunteers at the Women United division of the United Way and the construction design and labor were contributed by staffers like Pablo Juan Garcia and Emily Brenner of Dimeo Construction through the Dimeo Employee Charitable Foundation.

As he dug in the beds with the kids, Garcia marveled also that the two-by-four-inch mesh which they used in the fencing not only keeps the kids safe, but works so well in other ways. ​“My wife is an early childhood educator,” he said, and she had envisioned a design where the kids could even do art with the fencing, hanging ribbons, for example, on the rectangles of the wiring. An outdoor classroom that uses all the space. It’s so immersive.”

Have a favorite garden around town that you’d like this vegetable-flower correspondent to check out and write about? Send an email to [email protected] or leave a comment below with details.

And see below for other recent Independent articles about New Haven’s many gardens and gardeners.

• A Dream Grows In An Armory Garden
• On Service Day, Albertus Tends Its Garden
• Farmer Savage Preps For Mushroom Season
• Kid Gardeners Grow On Clinton Ave
• Whitney Gardeners Dig In On Leek Landfall