OUTDOOR LIVING LAB

On the campus of Yvonne Learning Center (YLC) thrives a peaceful green oasis where laughing children play under the shade of expansive trees, cultivate their own vegetable gardens and block out the blight saturating the rest of their world. This happy verdant sanctuary, otherwise known as the “Outdoor Living Lab,” is the creation and signature project of YLC. It is the culmination of a vision. It is home to many species of trees, flowering plants, and edible herbs and vegetables, as well as countless creeping, crawling, flying and slithering “critters” who find the garden just as appealing as the children – of course for very different reasons!

But the Outdoor Living Lab isn’t just for fun, though certainly plenty of fun activities regularly take place there – cookouts, parties, games and holiday celebrations among them. The real reason the Outdoor Living Lab exists is education – and what an interesting, multi-faceted education the Lab provides! Even our youngest students (pre-K) work in the organic garden planting seeds, tending and watering the plants as they grow, picking the veggies once they ripen and, finally, eating them – most recently as pizza toppings. YLC uses the garden to teach children first-hand about horticulture and plant biology, while they develop a sense of pride and responsibility as they follow their plants’ progress from seed to table.

The Lab offers a genuinely multi-disciplinary learning experience, incorporating vocabulary, mathematics, earth science, animal biology, history, ecology, weather science, landscaping, landscape design, health and nutrition, as appropriate. An appreciation for the active outdoors is also cultivated in children as an alternative to sedentary indoor activities.