By Steve Garbacz sgarbacz@kpcmedia.com
(Shared with permission from KPC Media Group)

AVILLA — Ceiling-height giraffes and dinosaurs and bears; large foam building blocks of all shapes and sizes; a small indoor track with its own timing device; a huge crane with functioning crank; a food truck complete with toy stovetops; a supermarket with checkout counter that, yes, actually lights up and beeps when you scan items.

That list only scratches the surface of the fun features of East Noble’s six new interactive preschool rooms at Avilla Elementary that launched this year.

But the half-day pre-K programs at Avilla aren’t just all fun and games — mix in story time, learning exercises, arts and crafts and interactive activities based off the room themes and fixtures and what you get is preschool experience unlike anything East Noble has been able to offer in the past.

“They really work to make the kids feel they’re totally emerged,” Superintendent Ann Linson said of the six themed rooms that look more like walking into a children’s museum exhibit than a traditional classroom.

What you won’t find in the preschool classrooms are chairs and desks. You won’t find television screens, tablets or computers. You don’t find bookshelves, pencil boxes, blackboard, whiteboards or really anything that looks like the rest of East Noble’s classrooms.

In its first year, East Noble had families representing more than 100 potential students interested in the program when it was announced earlier this year to be available at the start of the 2020-21 school year.

Then the pandemic happened. That put the brakes on some families’ willingness to send their little ones to school for a half day. Since preschool isn’t required in Indiana, East Noble saw some families pass on the first-year opportunity, so total enrollment is currently around 70 students.

That hasn’t been all bad, however, as it’s allowed the program to find its feet with fewer pupils in the first year, so teachers and administrators can do a bit of learning themselves and tweak for next year when hopefully the pandemic has abated and enrollment is expected to rise to original estimates.

With five classes in the morning and three classes in the afternoon, however, that 70 leaves classes sizes at less than 10 students apiece. With one preschool teacher and one instructional assistant staffing the classes, the student-to-teacher ratio is lower than you’d ever see at the K-12 level.

Avilla Elementary Principal Jeff Harper said the enrollment is mostly 4-year-olds, who will be moving on to kindergarten next year.

Assistant Superintendent Becca Lamon said East Noble is in the process of getting the preschool certified with the state, so it will have to meet certain requirements and be subject to state inspections, but will also deliver the district a Paths to Quality rating and open up the program to some financial aid from the state for low-income families who want to attend.

The program is already cheaper than many traditional day care programs and preschools at $119 per month, about $6 per day.

When school started in August, three of the six themed rooms were complete, with the contractor finishing up the last three. Set back by delays due to COVID-19, all of the preschool rooms are now done and in use.

Themed rooms include Amazing Me, a health and adventure themed room; Community, a town-themed room with flooring meant to look like streets; Journey in Time, a pre-historic themed room decked out with dinosaurs, including one giant model that nearly touches the ceiling and large dinosaur egg seating big enough to seat adults; Zoo, an zoo-themed room with several large animal models including a giant bear, elephant and giraffe among others; Midtown Market, a grocery and food themed room with its own food truck for play as well as farm-themed area including an iconic red barn and silo; and Construction, a construction themed room with not just building blocks but a large excavator with scoop bucket.

The program also has a large multipurpose room with traditional round tables and chairs — the only place you’ll find that — where students go for some activities, larger group get-together that are mostly on hold due to COVID-19 precautions, and snack times.

Students and teachers spend two weeks in a particular themed room before cycling to the next. With 36 weeks of school on the calendar, that rotation allows each class to hit each room three times per year.

On the second and third trips to each room, students can expect to see some familiar features, toys and activities from their previous trip, but each room is equipped with additional new activities to introduce on subsequent passes.

Teachers still do some traditional preschool-type activities — on a visit Wednesday students circled around a teacher for an interactive story time, as an example — but students also get set loose to learn by doing, exploring and playing with the room’s fun fixtures.

In the Amazing Me room, for example, students can use dry erase markers to write on a big set of teeth, then erase the letters, numbers or drawings with an oversized toothbrush eraser. Next to that, however, students can be honing fine motor skills by playing a big Operation-style game and learning about body parts.

Over in a place like the Midtown Market, however, they can learn a farm-to-table experience, starting by “growing” letters out of a faux-tilled field or collecting eggs — some that split in half with shapes that need to be matched to click together correctly — from the hen house. Then they can pick up items at the grocery store, scan them at the register, and work with play money. On the other side of the room, kids can play in the food truck, pretending to cook up meals and run the business, while others can come up like customers.

It’s a big dose of fun with learning disguised inside, but the kind of fun that even adults may have a hard time resisting when they step inside the immersive rooms.

With hopes that COVID-19 abates, East Noble wants to have open houses in the future to show off the rooms and let people explore their offerings. Administrators think the rooms themselves sell the program better than any info sheet or presentation could, so they want to get families inside once its safe.

In the future, too, the district hopes that they can utilizes the classes for more than just preschoolers, too, with plans to bring over kindergarten and possibly even first-grade students for special field trips to learn in the space.