Tucked away behind downtown restaurants and office buildings lies Bright Horizons daycare on 1629 Orrington Ave., with only a playground marking its entrance next to a salon. However, its rooftop garden boasts elaborate, earth-toned play structures and, most crucially, planters blossoming with produce and wildflowers that are labeled with clear manuscript writing.
As Thursday’s school day drew to a close, parents and extended family picked up their children from the school’s lower floors and brought them up to the rooftop to celebrate Bright Horizons’ annual Garden Party.
Young children explored the natural space, which was decked out with toys, crafts and plants for them to play with as adults intermingled, watching over with cups of cucumber water.
The Evanston center’s director, Nakeia Wells, who has worked in the center for nearly six years, said the most special part of the party is the engagement and community between parents, kids and teachers in the outdoor space.
“We love it, the kids love it, the teachers love it,” Wells said.
Wells added that the event was all about “finding joy in your inner child.”
While part of a national chain of daycare centers that boasts “Discovery Driven Learning,” Bright Horizons at Evanston is the only one in the area with such a rooftop view and unique outdoor experience, according to Wells.
According to Bright Horizons’ Assistant Director Emily Burchyett, the rooftop garden features prominently in their daily curriculum.
Students learn about the growth process from their classrooms and ultimately plant their saplings on the rooftop, where they can later tend to their plants during outdoors time twice a day.
This year’s endeavor marked the first time Bright Horizons’ Evanston staff collaborated with community partners for the party. Interns from Go Green Wilmette set up an exhibit of pollinator-friendly plants for adults and their children to learn from and admire.
Ananya Ray, a Go Green Wilmette intern managing the pollinator exhibit, said she was transported to her own preschool days attending Bright Horizons.
Now a rising senior at New Trier High School, Ray remembered that rooftop as the place where she discovered her love for the outdoors.
“I lived in an apartment at the time, so I didn’t have a garden area or place where I could just hang out outside, so this is where I would come,” Ray said.
As parents chased their gleeful children around the center’s grass-covered ramps and helped them make rock pies at a mini kitchen, mother Sarah Bakker watched her four and two-year-old children as they enjoyed the play structures.
Bakker, a longtime Bright Horizons Evanston parent and Garden Party veteran, said she enjoys the school’s dedication to hands-on outdoor learning in an era of iPads and screens for young children.
Plus, she added, the event provides much-needed connections for the parents, too.
“You see the parents that drop off and pick up, but this is a nice way to talk to people more, find a little bit of community,” Bakker said.
Thursday’s event was the first garden party for Tamica Grady, a Bright Horizons preschool teacher and parent who said the annual event generates a lot of hype.
Grady said the impact of the center’s nature-forward curriculum on her two-year-old son, Austin, was noticeable. Grady added that he was helping his grandmother develop a garden of their own with the skills he learned at school.
Grady said Austin’s curiosity and gentleness toward plants from school is a regular reminder to literally “stop to smell the flowers.”
“We’re just all, fast, fast and technology now, but it’s good for him to be able to see the real world, touch it, smell it, and then take care of it,” Grady said.
Email: [email protected]
Related Stories:
— Evanston to offer free breakfast and lunch to children this summer
— Evanston’s Starlight Concert & Movie Series returns to the city’s parks June 10
— Jazz quartet brings live music to downtown Evanston this summer
