WAIMEA — Consultants from Nature Explore, a Nebraska-based company revered for designing outdoor classrooms, visited Waimea last week on an important mission: to help finalize a creative concept that will allow Kanu o ka Aina preschoolers to explore nature while learning.
The company’s resource development director, Tina Reeble, and design director Jim Wike spent Wednesday and Thursday sharing with faculty and staff a plan they created for the 10,000-square-foot space, and led a workshop on its development.
“It is a mission of this school to develop a strong sense of place,” Reeble said. “This is a key driver of the design for the space.”
Affectionately called “imagination stations” by Kanu staff, the activity area focuses will ultimately be determined by faculty, parents and students on topics such as music, nature art, water, digging, physical movement, climbing, building and gathering. Each station will be named and decorated by the preschoolers.
“These spaces are intended to facilitate child-led explorations,” Wike said. “Instead of running up a set of stairs or sliding down a slide, moving from space to space questions become apparent. The wise educator will understand the conversations going on and provoke further questioning, getting into in-depth scientific inquiries with the children.”
The agency was hired in June after Kanu received two grants this spring totaling more than $130,000 — one from the Cooke Foundation and a STEM Learning Partnership grant through the Hawaii Community Foundation. The consultants provided initial design ideas, educational training and field testing, and will remain a collaborative partner throughout the project.
The idea was the brainchild of the school’s director, Pat Bergin.
“We were fortunate to receive a donated set of playground equipment, but alas it lacked instructions for putting it together. As I was researching instructions from various sites, I came upon this concept of outdoor classrooms,” she said. “Since this was a STEM grant, I thought it would be a great way to combine our need for playground space with science discovery stations in an outdoor setting. We used the term ‘imagination stations’ in the grant because it truly reflected what we wanted to instill in the kids — to have their imagination and creativity soar,” Bergin said.
Other Kanu staff working closely on the project are Nani Barretto, a parent and grant writer; Nancy Levenson, the school’s IT director; Debbie Child-Lawrence, the director of Malamapkii — the school’s early childhood education program; and educational aids Kai Espere and Heather Sarsona.
At the conclusion of the meeting, the action team was given an implementation guide to follow. Details will be finalized in the next month before building begins.
“We definitely want to involve the families with their expertise,” Barretto said. “There is still a lot of planning to do, such as who will build it, what materials we will need, who we will get them from, donations and volunteers.”
An unveiling of the completed project is scheduled for December. The outdoor classroom will be piloted to a small group of students over the holiday break, with full use beginning in January.
“My hope for our learners is that they will be able to explore to their hearts content, understand that there is no one way to learn, and know that learning occurs everywhere, not just within the confines of a classroom. But most importantly, that learning for them is fun and an enjoyable experience,” Begin concluded.