Blink and you just might miss the Child Development Center to the right of Lot 7 at Pierce College.
Because the Center’s existence may not be well known to many who frequent the campus, they held an open house and Scholastic book fair to draw the community in on May 22.
This marks their third semester hosting an open house, and the second doing a book fair, according to Child Development Center Director Melissa Brisbois.
“We are doing this to try to help get the word out to campus students that we are here,” said Brisbois, noting that many on campus are unaware of the center. “We encourage a lot of faculty and staff to come just to walk around and kind of get a context for what we are over here.”
The open house tour of the Child Development Center allowed for staff and students to preview the environment the children would be in on campus.
For assistant life sciences professor Crystal Ng, this was her first time visiting the Center and said she was glad they had an open house.
“The thing I liked the most actually was that the classrooms looked like homes,” assistant life sciences professor Crystal Ng said. “I had a very stereotypical view of how development centers are, which is the very bright neon. I really like that they have the more muted tones and they have a lot of natural things in the classroom.”
The Scholastic book fair was being run at the same time as the open house, a separate room filled with books for two to five year olds.
“This is more than I expected, to be honest,” Sign Language Interpreter Tricia Pellegrini said. “And I was a fanatic about when my kid went to book fairs. They would just hand me the scholastic forms that we filled out when they were a kid. They would just hand them to me because if there was one thing I would spend my money on, it was books.”
“Instead of just handing you the Scholastic form, the books are right here where you can touch them. And then when you bring the kids in, they give you like, ‘Mommy, I want this.’ It’s fantastic, a great way to get people to buy,” said Pellegrini, while pointing out a copy of the book “The Worst Teddy Ever.” “As a matter of fact, I’m going to buy that book. It’s an adorable book.”
