The sun is shining at Bright Horizons Child Care Center, with the help of an agricultural education class.

Members of the AgEdS 315 Leadership Programs in Agriculture class will help children at the daycare rebuild their playground. The facility is located at the College of Veterinary Medicine.

“We are very excited about the class and their interest of us,” said Amy Van Sickel, assistant director of the ISU Child Care Center. “We have been working on redoing the playground and did a lot of work last summer, and their project helps the process.”

Cary Trexler, assistant professor of agricultural education and studies, said students chose the project a month into the spring semester. Individual groups made pitches for programs, and students made the choice, he said.

“The students were choosing to work on the agronomy courtyard, which was mainly grunt work,” Trexler said. “The students would mainly be ripping out vegetation and replacing it, but Lisa Orgler, a landscape architect, told them about the playground.”

Funding has been a large part of the project, and Trexler said it has received more than $3,000 from the parents of the children at the center and also from Richard Ross, dean of the College of Agriculture. Stanley Johnson, vice-provost of Cooperative Extension Service, has also matched a dollar for every dollar the project raises, he said.

“We thought there was a need for our project, and the people who needed it [were] the kids, since they didn’t have enough things to play on,” said Nacy Lobo, senior in agronomy and design group contact.

The group wants to help rebuild the playground area to what the children had before, Lobo said, and they will build playground equipment and plant flowers and shrubs.

A project is done every semester, and students break into groups based on their personal choice, Trexler said. This semester’s project costs $7,800. The class is still looking for money, he said, but they are getting closer to their goals.

“The goals for the students are to work as a team and as a group to have leaders come out and also to get the project done,” Lobo said. “I think we are pretty comfortable where we are at now; everybody is contributing and getting along well.”