At child care center, care and much more

NORTH CANAAN — Skinny Pig Apartments and a treehouse painted John Deere green. These and other unique structures can be found in town, in a model of North Canaan that came out of the inspired imagination of some of its youngest residents.Preschoolers at Canaan Child Care Center have been studying the town, its architecture and who it takes to build it, welcoming professionals to the center to talk with them. Blueprints and models they created are on display in the Salisbury Bank and Trust Company’s North Canaan branch.It is amazing to see what they came up with. Skinny Pig — a name they chose for the tall, narrow building, simply because they liked it — even has a working elevator. They had the added challenge of building from materials on hand: cardboard, popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners and tissue boxes.The exhibit is called “On the Right Track to Success.”“We made it all by ourselves,” Cole Dennis said proudly, adding, “with some help from the teachers.”He pulled out a bed with sleeping popsicle stick people and pointed out the chimney that even had smoke coming out of it. Ciara Cecchinato-Paz said that on a tour of the town she noticed a lot of buildings are old and made of brick.Centers like this one, which have a National Association for the Education of Young People accreditation, do much more than babysitting. Teachers even go to evening classes to earn degrees. For the children, it’s not about being pushed. It’s about using early childhood education curriculum to open their minds to new ways of thinking. Canaan Child Care Center is part of the Northwest Corner Child Care Collaborative, which includes centers in Kent, Falls Village, Salisbury, Sharon and Cornwall. They will celebrate the Week of the Young Child with a free dinner for child center families on Friday, April 20, 6 to 8 p.m. at Housatonic Valley Regional High School. It will include entertainment by Tom the Music Man, face painting, and a display describing each child care and early learning center. NPR radio station WHDD’s Marshall Miles will broadcast live.Next up for Canaan Child Care Center kids is clothing design.

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less