Crispus Attucks             CHILDREN'S CENTER

Outdoor Learning Center

In an effort to help children learn in many different forms, CACC is taking a leadership position to be one of the first organizations in the City of Boston to create a “natural playground". The Natural Playground Learning Center is an innovative project targeting children's physical, cognitive and social emotional development. It offers special combinations of safe, fun, and challenging play and exercise opportunities while also providing settings for teaching about nature, science, math, and general well-being.

This multi-use outdoor facility provides a variety of opportunities for our students—focusing particularly on healthy physical and cognitive development. In addition to the benefits of physical exercise which can benefit the challange of childhood obesity, the educational feature is an essential component of the facility, which permits teachers to extend the interior classroom to the outdoors. There are opportunities to use numbers in a variety of ways; understand biology by planting and caring for flowers and trees; plot the sun's shadows as the earth revolves;

and build and set out birdfeeders to observe real birds foraging for food. Observing nature's cycle full-blown and knowledge about the sources of food often are missing from children's daily lives, and such experiences are vital to broadening their knowledge base. CACC's goal in creating the natural playground has been to produce both recreational and experiential learning spaces that will contribute to students' health and advance their observational, problem-solving, and critical thinking skills in ways that will benefit them throughout their intellectual and physical development

The Center reopened the Wiley Playground in May 2010 after a year of renovation to build the natural playground. These renovations were Phase I to bring this innovative approach to the school. Additional fundraising and planning is being done to expand the size and scope of the project at the Center. For more information on these plans or to support this project, please contact Lesley Christian.