William James Middle School
Life Lab Learning Garden
It is just 21 days to spring and exciting things are happening in the garden!
Here's what's new:
🙂 The south end of the garden has been transformed into a real outdoor classroom! We have had the benches installed, the outdoor rug laid down, and even a white board with markers and magnets stands ready to help you teach!
🙂 Weather tools are here! A thermometer and a barometer have been added to the rain gauge to help your students track weather patterns. Very soon a windsock will be installed on the roof, so your students can track wind speed and direction.
🙂 The garden has expanded to the indoors! Your students can watch various seeds germinate and track growth rates, as well as discuss details like first leaves vs. true leaves. Room 125 has a whole indoor grow-light shelf set up, and a wormery added to the garden corner so that, even in bad weather, students can garden! Discuss the importance of decomposers in the food chain with the wormery!
🙂 We are adding more plants all the time to increase the green! Be looking for vegetables flowing down the fence with our new vertical garden containers!
🙂 We have also added an insect hotel, more bird houses and birdfeeders, and we are seeing the wildlife start to discover our garden! So far, we have been visited by a couple of brown squirrels, and we saw our first bird in the garden today! What urban wildlife will your students discover in the garden next?
What's the big news?
William James Middle School students competed in the Wellness Grant competition. When last we announced this, our school had been chosen as one of only 6 schools to go on to the final round.
We created a video presentation, and students went before the panel of judges to explain why we deserved the grant and what we would be doing with the money, should we be successful in winning the grant.
Well, *drumroll please*, the winners have been announced and William James Middle School's Life Lab Learning Garden has emerged victorious!
We have WON the competition and will soon be receiving the $5000 check to expand our garden!
Way to go students!!!
