A Message from the Executive Director:
Cynthia Roberts

Among the toddlers and preschoolers playing on our black-top courtyard, the most popular spot these days is an unpaved patch of earth that once hosted a large tree, now long departed. When it rains (and it rained a LOT this spring), the patch turns into a delightful mud puddle that provides as many learning opportunities as any electronic educational gadget on the market today.

Armed with sticks and cups, sand pails and toy trucks, our children use their imaginations to turn the mud puddle into a construction site, or a lost world of dinosaurs, or a crater on the moon. Nature study truly becomes hands-on as they discover worms and bugs in the gooey mess. Vocabularies expand (squishy and sticky) along with sensory experiences,
such as wet or dry, rough or smooth, clean or dirty. (Yes, definitely dirty!)

With the successful completion of our $1 million Sweet Dreams Campaign, the opening of the Marni Sweet building, and the expansion of our program by 30 percent to include new infant, toddler and pre-k classrooms, we have had quite a year. On the heels of rapid physical growth, we are now poised to look inward and assure program quality and the connected feeling of community that are hallmarks of a PIC education.

And so, what’s next? As we near the end of our five-year strategic plan, the Board is preparing to engage all PIC stakeholders – families, staff, alumni, community partners and PIC children – in developing a new roadmap for the next five years. The Diversity Committee launched a survey in May designed to help the PIC community define diversity and use that definition to guide Center practices and policy. The Building and Grounds Committee has developed a list of projects to update and enhance classrooms in the Spruce Building (our home for more than 30 years) and to develop playgrounds into spaces that encourage children to interact directly with nature when they play.

Which brings me back to mud puddles. We need more of them. The plan for renovation of our main playground includes paths that lead to areas where children can build with chunks of wood, perform on an outdoor stage, contemplate the complexities of nature as they draw or paint, and dig to their heart’s content in an area especially arranged for dirt-digging.

At the end of each day, every PIC child has enjoyed songs and stories; learned sounds, letters or words; and engaged with peers to master the social skills that research shows are the true predictors of future success in school. But the most important accomplishment they can report is this: “I played.”