Watch Colgate students Sebastian Sagramoso Haley ’15, Fareeza Islam ’14, Hugo Fausto Torres-Fetsco ’15, Sara DiMassimo ’14, and Saliha Moore ’14, put up drywall, spackle, paint, sand, and decorate an old barn, transforming it into a center of discovery at a local day-care center in this short video documentary by Torres-Fetsco.
The students, as part of biology professor Krista Ingram’s Community-based Study of Environmental Issues course this semester, converted part of a barn behind the Chenango Nursery School into a hands-on nature center designed to spark the curiosity of preschoolers.
“The whole idea behind the course is that the students do projects in the community,” Ingram said. “The amount of work they put in was absolutely phenomenal … they did a lot of research on New York state standards for what teachers would be looking for at different age groups, and they looked at other nature centers in the area. There’s sensory tables and stuffed animals. There’s a way of using what children love to help them understand science.”