Real-Life Learning

It was a crisp autumn day at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. A sea of hundreds of squashes and gourds of all shapes, sizes and hues crowded the horizon.

“Miss Ellese! Miss Ellese! Come look at this one,” said Asier B. excitedly. He read from a label tied around the stem of a perfectly circular white pumpkin. “It’s called ‘The Moon.”

Ellese Ford, Program Manager of Bright Futures, PCYC’s K-5 enrichment program, smiled. Her hopes for this field trip had already been fulfilled many times over.

“He was so excited to read the names to me. Just kept running from one pumpkin to the next,” said Ford, who is also a teacher. 

Asier is one of 15 Bright Futures students who spent a recent Saturday at the Arboretum. For many, the experience of picking out their own pumpkin was a new core memory.

“None of them had gotten to pick out their own before, not actually walking through a pumpkin patch,” said Ford. “They told the kids, ‘If you can pick it up you can bring it home, so even the little students were trying to pick up the biggest pumpkin they could find. It was adorable.”

The students also got to experience apple picking, cider making and learning about how apples are grown, bred and harvested.

“Our partnership with the Arboretum is instrumental to us being able to offer the robust programming that we do,” said Andrew Hopkins, Director of Bright Futures. “For parents who aren’t able to connect their kids to a weekday program, these Saturday field trips reinforce the literacy, math and social emotional learning they work on during the week. And more importantly, they make it relevant and relatable to everyday life.”

Bright Futures is a K-5 enrichment program offered at no cost to children who live in North Minneapolis. For more information, please contact Ellese Ford at eford@pcyc-mpls.org.