Henry Abbott

On Monday, Executive Director of the Bowdoin College Children’s Center Martha Eshoo asked the campus community for one thing: live music. In a campus-wide email, Eshoo invited Bowdoin musicians to perform for the children at the Center in its “Mellow Music for Munchkins” program. Eshoo cited the importance of live music in helping children learn as an outgrowth of the Center’s focus on nature and hands-on activity.

“They have this real moment of watching that happen, as opposed to just hearing it, because they can’t imagine what’s happening,” Eshoo said. “So it really helps them, because they’re concrete learners, so having the concrete experience is fantastic.”

The Center is currently recruiting musicians. The program highlights the variety of music children can hear by inviting a collection of different musicians to the Center. Jennifer Ferry ’25, who has worked at the Children’s Center for a year and a half, has noticed changes in how the kids play after seeing just a few different artists.

“The different kinds of music influence them,” Ferry said. “You get the guitarist, and then in the play yard, they start strumming a stick. Those kinds of things influence play, the things that they hear and the things that they see. It shifts their brain. We’ve had a violinist come in, and then everything becomes a violin.”

The Center offers two time slots for musicians to perform: one at the beginning of the children’s day and one at the end. Ferry finds the routine to be a meditative process—a way to ease the hard transitions of the beginning and end of the day.

“They can start their days with this very beautiful, very melodic ease,” Ferry said. “And then you have the day go by, and children at a young age are very chaotic. There’s a lot of emotions, a lot going on—a lot of big feelings, which are totally deserved and need to be felt. When you transition to the end of the day, it makes you feel like the day had a purpose. You can just look around and the kids are dancing—kids who can’t even walk.”

To Eshoo, the end of the day offers a bonding experience to the whole campus—student musicians, staff, children and parents included.

“It gives everybody an opportunity, including the staff, of being in this moment where everyone’s together,” Eshoo said. “At the end of the day, the parents come, and they’ll stand in the hall. Everybody just loves their music so much, and the parents come for it. It’s just building community.”

Colin Vernet ’25 and Mia Schwartz ’25, two musicians in the Celtic fiddle band YONC, have been engaged in “Mellow Music for Munchkins” for a year. Vernet found that the Children’s Center offers more than just community building—it offers a living musical legacy.

“If even one of these kids sees us and decides that they are interested in fiddle music, that is a huge victory for us and for the future of the tradition,” Vernet said. “Intergenerational bonds are massively important to this style of traditional fiddle music because that has been, historically, the only way the tradition has survived.”

The chance to work with children also offers an escape from the stress of college life by allowing Bowdoin students to see through the eyes of children.

“It’s a super peaceful process for the students, because in our chaotic academic lives, the kids are very much a grounding force,” Ferry said. “I have this relationship with the children that makes me feel like there’s something bigger than my ten page essay that’s due or my lab. I watch these children live life for the very first time, and that’s a very special thing to see.”