 watching in the studio at Davis Media Access, kind of sort of during the pandemic we've been recording from home. So our shows might look a little bit different but we're still here bringing you interesting people and local content about interesting things happening in our community in Yolo County. I'm Autumn Lab Bay-Renau and it's my pleasure today to talk about growing whole children in the garden, seasonal explorations from Peregrine School, which is a new book recently released by mother-daughter team Laurie Hammond and Alexandra Hammond. I'm so pleased to have both of them here with me today, welcome. So Laurie, let's talk first about, let's start with you. You and I initially met through Arts Alliance Davis and you are the representative as the school director from Peregrine School. So let's start with a little bit of background and information about Peregrine School. Okay, well Peregrine School is a independent nonprofit school that we started in Davis. I started with my other daughter actually 14 years ago, next year will be our 15th year. It has two preschools and an elementary that goes kindergarten through sixth grade and incidentally it is a school that has been open during the pandemic live partially because we do so much outside in our gardens and we can be outside most of the time. It is a progressive school that centers on project-based learning and has an acronym called SOAR which is Science, Outdoor Education, Arts, and Responsibility. Thank you. We held an Arts Alliance meeting there last year and I just want to tell you the whole group of us was so impressed by the facility. It was I think only my second time visiting. You not only have gardens and all these spaces for creative play but you have a little bit of an outdoor amphitheater and it was abundantly clear that the outdoors and celebrating the seasons is very intrinsically part of your curriculum there. So I'm guessing that that's part of what inspired the book but can you tell us more about how you came to write and how your daughter came to illustrate this book? Yes well first of all as you all know we were all working at home much more during the pandemic although our school was going I wasn't there too much because of my age and that gave me an open space to do something I'd actually wanted to do for a long time which is to write about what we were doing at Peregrine School. I always knew when we started developing it that I wanted to continue by writing and presenting it to others because I feel like we're learning a lot of things that could be shared and that's not just with other schools but also with parents and teachers in various settings and so the pandemic was the first impetus just the fact that there was time but then I realized oh my goodness if we're writing a book as we are about teaching many things not to guard but teaching many things outdoors in the garden that it's really important to be able to do it right now because so many parents are home with their children looking for a thing to do and this is all about how you can make the most of the place where you are I mean we inherited a school that was just a soccer field and the kind of sterile environment and over 14 years have made it into a set of orchards and play places and fantasy gardens and all kinds of things so I'm a great believer that people can do things wherever they are so that was one impetus is to realize this is a great time for parents to realize what they can do at home or in the local park you don't have to have a big space to do it. The second thing that pushed us is that the wildfires came in addition to the pandemic but that made us even more aware than usual of how important it is to teach kids and everybody about the importance of the environment because it's I believe fully that they are connected to climate change and that we really need to understand what we're doing to the earth but with kids in the case of children I didn't want it to be this the suggestion that people scare kids with terrible things happening but more that this is an opportunity to give them a real base of understanding that will enable them to take the proper actions later and the final push was that during this same period we had black lives matter and so it seemed as if it was really important also to affirm the importance of social justice and that sort of education which is something that we also focus on in parent and school so all of these things became a part of this book growing whole children in the garden. That's lovely you know I was sitting here preparing for this interview so impressed that you and Alexandra your daughter did this project together and then you just mentioned that you actually started the school with your other daughter I didn't know that you have some pretty amazing women in your family so Alexandra as the illustrator of the book can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to be involved with the project? Yeah thank you so I'm an artist by training and by calling and I also do branding and art direction so that's kind of about you know my artwork in my studio is making paintings and conceptual projects my branding work is working with clients to basically help them tell their stories in ways that are effective. My mom has been doing all of this amazing very interdisciplinary cross-disciplinary work in education of all sorts for my whole life and she's been wanting to write a book and at first she came to me and said hey you know I think this is the time when I'm going to write my book and it's going to be for teachers and academics to teach them how to teach all these things that we do at Peregrine school and I said yeah mom but actually this is a book that it's great for teachers and it's also something that everybody needs right now so we started to work together and you know I used my kind of branding project management skills to kind of guide us through the project and you know be able to give my mother deadlines and myself and my team deadlines as we were designing the book and creating illustrations around it choosing imagery figuring out you know how to express the the look and feel of this book in addition to the content and it was an amazing opportunity to connect you know during this moment when I live in New York City and it was you know a moment where we weren't traveling to visit one another obviously it was a time of anxiety and isolation and to be able to connect on a weekly basis with my mom to work on a meaningful project but then of course check in and you know just have that time it was a really special kind of creation that I think could have only happened at this moment oh that's lovely as a mom with two adult daughters of my own I'm I'm I'm a little bit envious of that that regular time to connect but how wonderful um so for both of you I I I want to ask um maybe a little bit more about what growing the whole child means and then what you're both hoping this book adds to the body of work surrounding early childhood education we can start with you Laurie that might be easier for you okay um well growing child I think is it throws us right into the notion of education and how I believe it needs to change because I think schools have often become narrowed down to certain subjects and standards and people are very worried about people accomplishing things particularly with young children in reading and math and such and I think sometimes we forget that the child is a whole being that has emotions and a social life and physical needs and the need to move and among other intelligences it has now been very much acknowledged that there's something called naturalist intelligence which has to do with being oriented to where you are and to the outside world and to really actually understand the world you live in and I would say with the environmental crisis we have now that that to me has been raised up to be one of the fundamentals right up there with reading and math and science which goes along with it as a part of it these things are people things that people need to know in order to be citizens in our society today but in the case of children the way that we learn them is through joyful kinds of exploration in the outdoors so that children then understand the principles that are important for what we need to do for the environment in the world and so I think it's a very important thing that we pursue these studies now and that people understand how fundamental they are I would say that a lot of people think it's nice to study gardens it's kind of like what you would understand autumn from your work with art it's what happens with the arts too they're very considered very nice but sometimes peripheral sometimes fifth or sixth on the list of things that need to be done I guess I would say the same about the arts as about the gardens they're not there they're right up there with the most important things absolutely and and you make a really good point too we're also attuned to you know a calendar that has often commercially driven celebrations driving it as as main points and many of us have lost sight of you know the the balance that being in tune with the the seasons can bring so I really appreciate it I'm going to ask Diane our director to go to the slides we have a couple of pieces from the book and then I want to come back to Alexandra for just a minute these pieces here are not particularly high resolution but they give you an idea of the type of illustrations in the book and you know we kind of have the wheel of the year divided into seasons and they're just lovely so Alexandra I wanted to ask you is this the kind of illustrations you did for this book is this typical of your work you mentioned you're you're an artist a painter and you do branding work was this is this the first book that you've illustrated hmm that's a good question my illustrations may have been they've been part of branding projects that I've done um but I think this is the first published book that I'm listed as the illustrator I think that's true nice good so um I want to make sure we put up the URL for the book and where you can get more information where you can get the book itself and it's there on the screen but it is growing wholechildren.com I also want to mention that Laurie is deeply involved in our community here not only through Arts Alliance but just through all kinds of ways through the school itself and so if you wanted to find out more about Peregrine school and her work there you could contact them directly and I want to thank you both for making time to join me I want to congratulate you on this wonderful mother-daughter collaboration and on the feet of getting a first book published that's that's a huge milestone so congratulations and for everyone else who's watching I want to remind you that in the studio is produced semi-regularly here at Davis Media Access or in in our homes during the pandemic and that we have a huge backlog uh local archive of of these programs on our website you can access all our information at davismedia.org including the schedule for DCTV channel 15 Comcast and Davis but also we put these on our YouTube channel if you're not subscribing to Davis Media Access on YouTube you might rethink that because there's all kinds of good local information there from Davis Media Access this has been in the studio I'm Autumn Lab Bay-Renau and thanks so much for tuning in