Graydon Hipple and 18 other students have spent the semester studying bread, touring local kitchens and turning their classroom into a bakery, complete with prop equipment.
But the students aren’t participating in a new I-series course or Honors seminar. They are 3-to-6-year-olds, enrolled in the Center for Young Children — a 110-student laboratory school where kids explore curriculums they choose themselves while many of their parents work or attend classes on the campus.
The Education college began operating the school in the 1940s, and it has since become a much relied-upon resource for university employees. This year, only 36 students made it off the waitlist of 90 children to fill spots in the center, according to the center’s Director Francine Favretto.
Because of the demand and the school’s use of a first-come, first-serve system — although children of university community members receive priority — Favretto said university employees will often register their child right after he or she is born.
Dining Services spokesman Bart Hipple, 4-year-old Graydon’s father, said one of the things that drew him to the center was the teachers’ expertise — every instructor has a degree in early childhood education, and they each use interactive curriculums.
“[The staff] don’t try to turn them into young college students,” Hipple said. “[The lessons are] an intensity and duration that’s just right for 3- and 4-year-olds, so that’s nice.”
Several university students from the education school also aid the center’s teachers and receive course credit.
Children in each of the six classrooms brainstorm topics to study in more depth and often choose one based on a vote.
Additionally, Favretto said the children’s interest dictates the class. If they lose interest in one topic, the teachers move on to a new one, and if they are particularly enthusiastic, they can spend more time studying it.
While Graydon’s class explores all things bread — they have baked tortillas, cornbread and pizza dough and visited a Panera kitchen — the other five rooms chose to study teeth, farm animals, bones and fossils, pizza and soil.
Favretto said those choices reflect kids’ desire to explore their environments.
“Children really try to reenact the world they observe,” she said.
The center has two degreed teachers in every classroom, as well as student aides and practicum students.
Student aide Erin Flannery, a senior family science major, said she “fell in love” with the environment of the center after completing her family science internship there last semester.
“I always babysat kids a lot, but I never was really with them in the classroom setting,” she said. “I had no idea what goes into a day of preschool.”
Several departments across the campus also send students to the school to conduct research with the children.
“That’s one of our missions,” Favretto said.
For example, students in the linguistics department explored how children’s brains allow them to acquire languages quickly. In another study, students tested children’s conflict resolution skills.
Flannery said after working closely with the children, she is now considering going to graduate school for early childhood education.
“[I thought they] would be cutting their hair off with scissors or something,” she said. “Their little minds are amazing.”
gray@umdbk.com
