The Tulips are Up!

Led by our PTA garden gurus, Maggie Hall and Kristin Townsend, Green Team students planted red emperor tulips last October around two trees just outside our front entrance.  Here they are in mid-February, just poking through the mulch.

The tulips are part of an international science project called Journey North.  When the tulips emerge in the spring, the date is recorded on Journey North's website. 

 

 Students can then track the arrival of spring across the Northern Hemisphere, and compare different location's emergence dates from year to year.

 

 

 

2nd Grade Raises and Releases Monarchs

We found enough Monarch caterpillars munching on our milkweed plants around the school grounds this fall that all four second grade classes were able to bring some caterpillars into their classrooms. The students had the chance to observe the Monarch lifecycle up close and then release the adult butterflies in the Learning Gardens.

 

Monarch caterpillars are very picky eaters! They will only eat the leaves of milkweed plants. Luckily we have common milkweed, swamp milkweed and butterflyweed growing in the Learning Gardens. When the caterpillar hangs upside down in a "J" shape, you know it's getting ready for it's big transformation.

The chrysalis is green with gold spots. The caterpillar will spend 10-14 days like this, seemingly inactive, but there is a lot going on in there!

The adult Monarch emerges with it's wings wet and wrinkled. It must unfold them and let them dry out before it can fly.

Some of the butterflies were ready to go, but the weather was not cooperating. If the temperature is below 60 degrees, Monarchs are not able to fly. Since it was cold and raining after a few of the butterflies emerged (technically it's called eclosing), we supplied them with some nectar plants from the gardens, and the kids got to watch them a little longer.

 

Mrs. Pearson's class released their Monarchs in the Learning Gardens on a sunny afternoon. We hope they make it to Mexico!

 

 

Green Team Plants Monarch Waystation

Green Team members ready to plant on a rainy spring day.

 

Green Team students met one rainy afternoon to plant milkweed and nectar plants in the Learning Gardens.  The new Monarch Waystation will support the monarch butterflies that migrate through our area every spring and fall on their way to and from Mexico. Monarch caterpillars will munch on the three types of milkweed we planted, and the adult butterflies will drink the nectar from the goldenrod, asters, brown-eyed susans, and other flowering plants. To find out more about the amazing monarch migration, and how you can plant a monarch waystation in your own yard, visit http://monarchwatch.org/waystations/.

Using our own compost made from cafeteria scraps!



Dirty hands = good work!

Fourth Grade in the Forest

 

 

Fourth grade classes were the first to put the new trail through the woods to good use as part of their unit on Virginia ecosystems. Each group got up close and personal with their small piece of the forest floor, sketching and labelling living and nonliving things they found in their plots. They plan to come back and do soil tests with the plots later in the year. The trail has been a work in progress since last year, and it's almost finished! We have an outdoor classroom, signs marking plants and trees native to Virginia, and a nice long cleared path all the way through the woods. One loop still needs some clearing, and we have a local boy scout working on bridges and mulching for the trail as part of his Eagle Scout project.  Many, many thanks to the PTA Eco Committee, volunteers from the Kohls department store across from Fairview,  parent, ecologist and cub scout leader Mary Benger, and boy scouts from troop 1346 and their families for helping create this awesome learning opportunity right in our backyard!




Fourth graders observing and recording.





The woods next to school, before!

Mulch by the truckload.

Fourth grade studying Virginia ecosystems.

We found all KINDS of interesting things clearing the trail.



It's ready, come on outside!

A year in the Learning Gardens

Courtesy of NurtureStore

Here's a tentative idea of what we'd like to focus on each month in Fairview's Learning Garden.

September:  weed, transplant perennials

October:  create plant labels, mulch and plant cold season veggies & bulbs (Journey North Tulip Test Garden) 

November:  gather seeds & uses, bird scavenger hunts

December: Sunflower shaped sundial using chalk and pots (see above photo.)

January: ice sun catchers, science of melting

February: Using paper rolls create seedling plantings, participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count

March: spring cool veggie planting

April: make nature prints with air dry clay for Mother's Day magnets

May: worm surveys using clear sided root boxes

June: harvest party and flower/leaf pressing

October in the Learning Gardens

This month in the Garden

In October, we realize the need to create functional plant markers as we have transplanted some existing plants and look to label seeds of cool season crops.

Using paint stirrers, classes can choose one of our plants to write on the stick first in pencil, then with paint trace the letters and decorate the stick. Some classes may want to choose a theme for their labels (a rainbow, various shades of blue and yellow, stripes or swirls, are some ideas.)

Younger students can trace pre-written labels, older students can help look up the names of plants they select to label in the perennial beds by looking at plant characteristics and using a field guide.

Secondly, we need to get seeds in our four veggie beds before too much time passes!  So in the first two weeks of October, we will plant radish, turnip, spinach, kale and chard seeds.

For younger classes, drinking straws will be pre-inserted in our rows enabling them to take their seed to the appropriate row (labeled with our fancy new labels!) and place the seed down the straw. Then, they can remove the straw and pat the dirt down with their finger.

Older students will be able to help string a planting line, dig the trench and plant the seeds by hand.

A signup sheet has been posted by the mailboxes in the front office. We need teachers who are willing to bring their kids outside for a thirty minute window or so this month to sign up soon so we can get on their schedule.

The Learning Garden committee and staff liaisons are super excited to get Fairview students engaged and enjoying the garden space. We have plans to offer monthly “programs” and would like each class to choose at least one to participate with. By encouraging students to help build, create and care for the gardens it develops a sense of ownership and responsibility.

Parents and grandparents are sought as willing volunteers to help in the garden or with some of these hands-on projects as garden guides for students.  For a full calendar of our monthly garden projects, check this blog.

Since Labor Day, volunteers have been working on getting weeds gone and plants flourishing! We’ve had several donations including hostas, bee balm, daylilies, crocosmia, and phlox. Fairview families have also been gracious in giving cast off pots, large and small, which will be used for hands-on planting with students and bringing some green to our patio and classroom door areas.  All the donations and help are certainly appreciated!

We also are planning to develop and install two hardscape hands-on play features for the gardens, one in the fall and one in the spring. Some ideas include a marble run, melody pole, root box and weaving wall. Stay tuned for more details on that.

Green Team Conducts School Waste Audit

One of the steps to becoming a certified Eco-School along the Consumption and Waste Pathway is to do an audit of your school’s waste to see if there are things being thrown away that could be recycled, reused, composted, or in some other way saved from the landfill.  The student members of the Green Team bravely donned their plastic gloves and sorted through two bags of trash from the hallways of Fairview.  We were a bit surprised at what we found…although we are in our third year of a school-wide recycling program, and many of the kids are doing a great job recycling every day in their classrooms and in the cafeteria, it looks like we still have a lot of room for improvement.

"Why is this perfectly good pencil in the trash?"

Only a little over half of our "trash" is actually trash!

 The results after the green team students sorted two bags of “trash” into white paper, colored paper, cardboard, plastic, metal and actual trash, which included food waste.