Learning Is a Family Affair at the SM&NC’s Art, Nature & Me Preschool

A new school year is getting under way for the littlest of learners enrolled in the Art, Nature & Me Preschool at the Stamford Museum & Nature Center. The program, which hosts 3- and 4-year-olds for morning and afternoon sessions, 2, 3 or 5 days a week, greeted new students for an orientation session on Monday, Sept. 12, in the preschool’s bright and airy classrooms on the grounds of the SM&NC’s 118-acre facility.

The happy scene was especially poignant for Ellen Reardon, the SM&NC’s longtime Head of Early Childhood Education, as she welcomed her granddaughter, three-year-old Ella Reardon, to the program.

Watching Ella play with her mother, Jessica, and father, Tim – Ellen’s son, who is a Captain in the Norwalk Fire Department – Ellen spoke of how the moment brought her back to the first days of her own career as an early childhood educator. “When Tim was 3 and newly enrolled in preschool, the school he attended had an unexpected need for an extra person in the classroom, so I started helping out.”

Ellen has been in the classroom ever since. Following her experience as a substitute, then staff teacher, at her son’s preschool, Ellen went back to school herself to earn a degree in Early Childhood Education, and, in time, her Connecticut Director’s Credential. She’s been at the Stamford Museum & Nature Center since 1993.

“I’ve always had a passion for nature and for early childhood education,” says Ellen, who was raised in Stamford and happily recalls being outside most every day as a child. “But I didn’t realize until Ella walked through the doors of Art, Nature & Me just how much this day meant to me. This is what I’ve been waiting for, to be able to give my granddaughter the same opportunities for a nature and play-based early education that I had, that I was able to give her Dad, and what we’ve been able to give generations of young children at Art, Nature & Me.”

“Spending time outside enables children to explore the world through all their senses, which is the basis for all learning,” says Ellen. “We get our children outside daily, either on the farm or in the forest. As we like to say, “We are the field trip.” After all, how amazing is it to take kids into the SM&NC’s planetarium and read “Goodnight, Moon” to them as the stars slowly begin to shine above them?”

“It’s part of the SM&NC’s mission, to inspire creativity, foster self-discovery, promote environmental stewardship, and nurture an appreciation for lifelong learning by being a vital cultural and educational resource for the community and a focal point for family activity and interaction.”

For further inspiration, Ellen turns to the preschool’s Parent Handbook, where she can recite the following passage virtually by heart. The words were written more than 50 years ago by Rachel Carson, whose book “Silent Spring” helped sparked the modern environmental movement:

“If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow. The years of early childhood are the time to prepare the soil. Once the emotions have been aroused – a sense of the beautiful, the excitement of the new and the unknown, a feeling of sympathy, pity, admirations or love – then we wish for knowledge about the object of our emotional response. Once found, it has lasting meaning. It is more important to pave the way for the child to want to know than to put him on a diet of facts he is not ready to assimilate.”

Ellen and her staff of 17 dedicated teachers support a child’s sense of wonder and natural curiosity by providing hands-on experiences in its classrooms as well as outdoors, weather permitting. She’s guided by the time-tested knowledge that “if children are socially and emotionally ready for kindergarten, they will succeed academically.”

We wish Ellen, our teachers and their young charges a fun and enriching year of discovery, indoors and out. Says Ellen: “One thing’s for sure: The kids teach me something new every day.”

For more information about the SM&NC’s Education Programs, including the Art, Nature & Me Preschool, please visit http://www.stamfordmuseum.org/education.html or call 203.977.6528.