Visionary Nursery School Turns 50

Westville Community Nursery School (WCNS) is heading into its next half century with the principle that has served it well for 50 years — listen to children and teach them what they want to know.

The preschool reached the end of its fifth decade in Westville on March 11. That entire time, the school has implemented a play-based learning philosophy that experts say is more appropriate for young children. New Haven Public Schools has reintroduced play-based learning into elementary schools in recent years.

“Our philosophy is children learn best through play,” said WCNS Director Patty O’Hanlon.

For two weeks around St. Patrick’s Day, the children were obsessed with leprechauns. The WCNS teachers saw the interest and ran with it. Students would come back to their classroom to find the school’s resident leprechaun had taken lunchboxes out of cubbies and piled them in the center of the floor. The leprechaun dyed the water in the toilets green and sprayed silly string over their playground.

The teachers wove lessons into this interest. They read books about leprechauns to the class. They designed a project where students could build their own ​“traps” for leprechauns out of cardboard boxes, tin foil and construction paper.

All this developed the students’ fine motor skills, language skills, creativity and the social-emotional skills required to work together.

An Online Birthday Party

Housed in a former bar at 3 Tour Ave, Westville Community Nursery School primarily teaches children between the ages of 3 and 5, with some younger students. Three-quarters of the students live in Westville. The others travel from Hamden, Woodbridge and Orange.

Some students are children of alumni. Alumni tend to stay friends with their classmates and many stay involved.

O’Hanlon tries to maintain a close culture among parents and alumni. During the Covid-19 pandemic, she replaced their regular dinners together with monthly virtual family events. The school also organized a family hike where students found painted rocks others had hidden along the trail.

The 50-year anniversary celebration had to go online too. The school organized an online ​“birthday party” for current students and their families. Parents dropped off homemade cupcakes and decorating kits to every family to enjoy during the event.

O’Hanlon plans to host larger in-person events for children and adults when it is safe to do so. She has also scheduled a 50-year fundraising campaign for the fall. This would allow WCNS to replace their roof, the only major renovation that didn’t happen when they took over the former bar space in 2015.

Two Cases In Six Months

Westville Community Nursery students have split into two separate classrooms during the pandemic. This keeps each cohort of students smaller and has made it easier to quarantine.

Two students at the school have tested positive for Covid-19 since the school reopened in September. One case quarantined one class in November. The other case quarantined the other class in February. No one else at the school caught the disease in either case.

The relatively low case numbers follows a pattern seen across childcare facilities and preschools — young children are less likely to get Covid-19, become severely ill or spread the disease to others.

The new class split required WCNS to build a second playground. As children peddled tricycles on one side and drove an imaginary bus on the other, teachers reminded students to pull their masks over their noses. Students only took off their masks when eating or drinking; some knew to stand far apart from others while doing so.

The Jumping Mat

Once in a while, the Westville Community Nursery teachers throw a formal lesson into the mix. This week, one of the lessons was about building a rainbow in a jar using the densities of different liquids.

Most students gathered to watch, spellbound by the way the purple syrup stayed separate from the blue detergent. At the beginning, few students guessed the liquids would stay separate. By the final color, they understood that the liquids chosen would layer on top of each other without mixing.

One 3‑year-old was distraught, though. Isa Soto Filpo started bawling as soon as he heard the bell for the break in playtime. So teacher Jaime Kane asked him whether he needed a hug and gathered him into her lap.

As other students watched the rainbow in the jar experiment, Isa played with a vintage lunchbox, learning how to open the clasp and scoop sand inside.

Kane loves the play-based approach at Westville Community Nursery School. She moved to Westville after earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Special Education from Southern Connecticut State University. Her children attended the school first. She found an opening there in 2008 after her children had outgrown the program.

She is still learning about what sparks interest and curiosity in children. She bought the vintage lunchboxes from a consignment store because she noticed that kids love to put things in containers.

“I love being with kids and living the life of 3- to 5‑year-olds,” Kane said.

Her own children remember the time at the school fondly. Her son wrote his college essay about wanting to be 4 again.

One activity that always seems to come up in alumni memories is the ​“jumping mat” — an old mattress children are allowed to jump on. O’Hanlon remembered talking to a parent at a family event who had attended the school themselves. After a painting activity, the parent asked to jump on the mattress for old time’s sake.

“I’ve been wanting to do that for 30 years,” the parent told O’Hanlon.