A Kids' Paradise

By C.J. Hirschfield

Lakeside Park is a very special neighborhood that’s designed with our community’s kids in mind. There’s Children’s Fairyland, of course, a treasure for our youngest kids since 1950. There’s the Rotary Nature Center, which since 1953 has served as a citywide interpretive center for science and environmental education. 

Rotary Nature Center in Lakeside Park.

And there’s the delightful Junior Center of Art and Science, which moved to Lakeside Park in 1992 from Mosswood Park, where it had been located since 1954.

The Junior Center of Art and Science in Lakeside Park.

Each of us has offered generations of kids the opportunity to create, imagine, play and learn in the heart of the city.

Fairyland and the Junior Center have just announced a new partnership: Every Sunday, a member of the Junior Center’s staff will oversee Fairyland’s arts and crafts activities, where he or she will build on children’s creative curiosity and encourage art activities in the home, using natural and everyday objects.

We both hope that when the Rotary Nature Center reopens, after having been closed for nearly a year, we can forge strategic partnerships with it as well. The synergies we can create to serve kids and support one another’s missions are limited only by our imaginations, and make perfect sense in this environment of tight nonprofit budgets.

We have found a very willing partner at the Junior Center in the form of the organization’s executive director of seven months, Dominique Enriquez. An accomplished visual artist and educator, Dominique has a bachelor’s degree in studio art and master’s in education from U.C. Santa Cruz. Before joining the Junior Center, she served as the Richmond Art Center’s studio education director. She’s an East Bay native who says she’s happy to live in the neighborhood where she works.  

Dominique Enriquez.

Dominique acknowledges that the Junior Center is “a hidden gem,” and says one of her main missions is to let folks know that there’s always something fun and interesting going on there, even for drop-ins. “One of my main missions is to bust open our doors so that they’re wide open,” she says.

She told me that Gary, who’s at the center every day from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m, is a big help. It took me a minute to realize that Gary is a 40-year-old tortoise, and clearly the star of the show. “I never thought that I’d fall in love with a tortoise,” says Dominique. “But he really is quite charming.”

Gary the tortoise (via Yelp).

Artist and educator Leticia Javier is the instructor who will be at Fairyland each Sunday as part of our partnership. “Not only is she an amazing teaching artist, but she’s focused on young learners and is part of our Oakland community,” says Dominique. (Fairyland will continue to hold arts-and-crafts sessions on Saturdays from noon to 2 with artist Timothy Eyes.)

Leticia Javier teaching kids at Fairyland.

Fairyland is happy to promote the activities of the Junior Center during our arts and crafts sessions.The more parents know about affordable resources available to our families, the better.

Surprise: Our local benevolent organizations had that vision a half-century ago, when World War II had ended and new families were being started. The Lake Merritt Breakfast Club (which still meets every Thursday morning) created and funded Children’s Fairyland; the Junior League of Oakland-East Bay (which still thrives) begat the Junior Center of Arts and Science, and Oakland Rotary (which meets each Thursday for lunch) funded and built the Rotary Nature Center. Two are going strong, and next week we’ll have the opportunity to see what the City of Oakland has in mind for the re-opening of the Rotary Nature Center.

On Wednesday, Jan. 24, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at the Sailboat House (568 Bellevue Ave.), the interested public will get a chance to participate in the discussion. Many of us hope that the plan will include a resident naturalist, as has been the case at the Rotary Center for over half a century – no doubt the reason scores of kids have been turned on to the “STEM” subjects: science, technology, engineering, and math.

The nature center has been closed the entire time Dominique has worked next door, and she’s as excited as I am to learn about new possibilities for partnership, especially since we’re both Oakland Rotary members.

In a world of commercialism and screens, Fairyland, the Junior Center, and Rotary Nature Center give our community’s kids the chance to get down and dirty, and to learn about art and science in a way that’s just good, old-fashioned fun. If you want to see a rebirth of the nature center, please join us on Wednesday evening.

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C.J. Hirschfield has served for 15 years as executive director of Children's Fairyland, where she is charged with the overall operation of the nation's first storybook theme park.