Brooksfield is excited to announce that we have joined Dr. Jane Goodall’s Roots & Shoots organization which helps young children understand how they can help improve their communities for humans, animals and their environments. This past weekend our Kindergarteners, as well as other Brooksfield students, attended a Roots and Shoots event called the Tomorrow & Beyond Tour which celebrates the 40th anniversary of the Jane Goodall Institute. Our students have been working on numerous Roots and Shoots projects for years including organic gardening, making blankets for the children’s hospital, collecting candy for troops, creating lavender sachets for retired veterans and making Thanksgiving dinner for a family in need.
Brooksfield’s latest project, to help make our community a better place, is the adoption of Bryn Mawr Park, located behind the Balducci’s shopping center. The park is a lovely and peaceful place with a footbridge and a stream with many old hardwoods and a great variety of birds. For the last couple of months our Kindergarteners hopped on Buster and travelled to the park to eat lunch and explore. As a group, they spent time noticing all of the wildlife located in the park, including many varieties of birds, squirrels and more! Once they became familiar with the park, they started to plan how they would enhance it to make it better for themselves and other visitors including people and animals. Our Kindergarten class was awarded a monetary gift from Jane Goodall’s Roots and Shoots organization to put towards their project. After much consideration the Kindergarteners have decided that the park needs a bird house!
At the event this past weekend the Kindergarteners displayed their plans for Bryn Mawr park which included a diorama of the park as well as their drawings of what they thought the park should look like. They were so excited to share their plans with Dr. Jane Goodall. What an amazing experience for our Kindergarteners to meet Dr. Jane Goodall and to explain to her how they plan to make their little niche of the world a better place!
