Planting Seeds: How C4 & Bright Start Are Bringing Nature to Leadville's Littlest Learners
Every month, something a little magical happens in a Leadville preschool classroom. A special visitor arrives with a wagon overflowing with plants, herbs, a carrot pulled fresh from the ground — and a room full of three- and four-year-olds leans in with excitement and wonder!
That visitor is Ash Warner, Education Director at Cloud City Conservation Center (C4), and those moments of curiosity are the heart of a new partnership between C4 and Bright Start Learning Center — one that's already making a difference for Lake County's littlest community members.
Why This Partnership Matters
Bright Start is a cornerstone of the Leadville community, giving kids a nurturing, stimulating place to grow during their most formative years. Providing quality early childhood education in a small mountain town is no small feat —as a recent Colorado Sun investigation highlighted, rural communities across Colorado face real challenges accessing and funding care for their youngest residents. That's what makes Bright Start's work, and the partners who support it, so vital.
When the Life Time Foundation invested in both C4 and Bright Start — supporting Bright Start's work expanding access to healthy foods for preschoolers, and C4's hands-on nature and agriculture programs — a natural collaboration was born.
The result: a monthly visit that brings the plant world straight into the early childhood classroom.
What's Happening in the Classroom
Since November, Ash has visited Bright Start each month to introduce preschoolers to plants through interactive, age-appropriate lessons. So far, kids have explored the parts of plants using everyday vegetables, experienced the thrill of harvesting carrots, and discovered the smells, textures, and colors of herbs, spices, and fruits.
Desiree Trujillo, Executive Director of Bright Start Learning Center, says the impact is immediate and visible: "It has been so special to watch our students light up during Ash's visits as she brings plants, food, and nature to life in such engaging and meaningful ways."
Each visit is designed to spark wonder — to make a child reach out and touch something, smell something, ask why — and to start building the kind of positive relationship with food and nature that lasts a lifetime.
"Her activities create hands-on experiences that spark curiosity, invite exploration, and help our children build joyful connections to healthy food and the natural world," Trujillo adds.
What's Coming Up
The program continues through spring, with upcoming visits exploring pollinators, flowers, and garden tools — and culminating in a farm visit to Cloud City Farm in May, where students will see firsthand where food comes from and how it grows.
This is what community partnership looks like at its best: two local organizations, a shared funder who believed in both of them, and a classroom full of kids who now know what a carrot smells like when it comes out of the ground.
This program is made possible through the generous support of the Life Time Foundation- more info at ltfoundation.org. Learn more about Bright Start Learning Center at brightstartleadville.org and about C4 at c4leadville.org