Past projects 13
Our Learning Is on a Roll!
Funded Apr 7, 2025Thank you so much for your donation to our project - without your generous support, projects like this would never ever be possible. We are so grateful for how you have helped us, and we want you to know how important you are in our world. We truly could not do what we do without you.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Stephanie
This classroom project was brought to life by Optimum.Plan Bee
Funded Apr 5, 2025Thank you so much for the support of our projects - it is deeply appreciated. Without generous support from people like you, none of what we do would ever be possible. Please know that your contributions are making a difference and that we will always remember how you have helped us.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Stephanie
Sharp Tools, Sharp Minds
Funded Feb 6, 2025Thank you so much for your very kind contributions to our school and to our project. As an EE school we are always looking for ways for our education to connect to the natural world. This particular project will allow students to learn about and care for our local forests and natural spaces.
When we go out we will be identifying invasive species and learn not only how to identify these species, but how to manage them in our forests. We will utilize the tools you have provided us in order to remove them for the health of our native ecosystems.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Stephanie
Sweetest Part of STEM
Funded Dec 18, 2024Thank you so much for generous contributions to this long-term project at our school. We have been keeping bees now for several years, and it has been nothing but rewarding. It truly is a wonderful thing, to be able to bring students out to the hive, and watch them as they approach hesitantly at first (so many people are afraid of bees! Whether from not understanding them, or a previous bad experience, etc), - but after a few minutes their eyes just light up! They get closer, and most importantly they get curious. When students are allow to access their curiosity, that is the most powerful tool for authentic learning.
Authentic learning truly is at the heart of what we do at our school. It is important for us that our students are able to take their education into the real world, and see it in context.
Now that we have a honey extractor, this is the final piece of large equipment for the project, allowing students access to the entire range of beekeeping responsibilities. And all of the responsibilities connect directly to their learning. It truly is an amazing experience.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Stephanie
Giving Compost a Spin!
Funded Dec 18, 2024Thank you so much for generous contributions to this long-term project at our school. We have been composting now for several years, and it has been nothing but rewarding. It truly is a wonderful thing, to be able to bring students out to the compost, and watch them as enjoy hands on learning.
Authentic learning truly is at the heart of what we do at our school. It is important for us that our students are able to take their education into the real world, and see it in context.
Now that we have a compost tumbler, this is the final piece of large equipment for the project, allowing students access to the entire range of composting. It truly is an amazing experience.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Stephanie
Hanging Hammocks Help Us Read
Funded Feb 3, 2023Bringing hammocks into our "tool box" for environmental education has been an absolute game changer. Students could not be more thrilled to spend time outside, and we are asked daily if "we get to use the hammocks today". It's amazing to see their excitement, and one teacher even made the comment that she had never seen her class so quiet and so focused, as they were when using the hammocks.
Not only are the hammocks a great way to get outside, but they have been used for a wide variety of activities, including nature journaling, reading to self, reading to buddies, and even taking a math test!
All in all, the hammocks have been an amazing addition, and we cannot wait to keep using them, and to hopefully get even more someday.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Stephanie
This classroom project was brought to life by 3MGives.Worms in the Classroom
Funded Jun 2, 2022Thank you so much for helping bring this project to life! As an outdoor and environmentally focused school, we are always looking for exciting new ways to give our student's hands-on opportunities such as this. We only just set the worm bin up today, and are already seeing them starting to get adjusted to their new home. (It was a huge hit when a few of the worms started to crawl away when they hadn't been noticed still in the shipping bag -- though don't worry, all worms are now safely accounted for!)
Our next steps will be to continue monitoring the health and well-being of the worms, slowly adding more food, as well as additional boxes to the tower. We hope that soon we'll be able to use the worms to manage the food waste being produced in our kitchen, such as apple cores and strawberry tops while we process fresh fruit for breakfast.
For now it's just a matter of waiting and watching with wonder as the worms convert our "waste" into something amazing!”
With gratitude,
Ms. Stephanie
Much Ado About Martins
Funded May 4, 2021We are SO excited to finally be able to start our work in becoming Purple Martin Landlords! The weather and Covid protocols prevented us from jumping into this project as quickly as we wanted to, but our "Green Team" -- the group of students, staff, and community members, who work on sustainability goals for our school, have now become to assemble the bird house.
There are a lot more pieces than we anticipated, but boy do we LOVE a challenge! The "Green Team" students are the best, brightest, and most passionate members of our student body, and any opportunity to help the environment, they jump right in. This project was no exception. They didn't hesitate for a second. We immediately began to work together, reading the directions together, and searching for online tutorials.
The "Green Team" has been working all year on our goals, including increasing biodiversity at school. Creating the Purple Martin House ties in closely with that, by bringing a new species onto our grounds, and another opportunity for students to learn.
Even our youngest members, (only in Kindergarten!) were able to lend a hand. When the martin house is finished, we'll be placing it near a brand new on-campus vegetable garden. We are so excited to take this next step, and hope to have a colony of martins very soon.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Stephanie
This classroom project was brought to life by SONIC Drive-In and 3 other donors.Spy on the Hive
Funded Mar 2, 2021Thank you so much for your generous donations to our project! As a STEM School, the incorporation of technology into our academics is of great importance to us, and if we can utilize that technology in our environmental education as well, that's even more impactful for our students.
Purchasing a thermal imaging camera has not only introduced our students to a new technology, but it has also allowed us to monitor our honey bees throughout the winter so we can more easily care for them.
The camera senses the heat within the hive, and as of right now, it's below zero outside. However, inside the hive it's a balmy 90+ degrees Fahrenheit. Not only does this tell us that the colony is alive and robust, but we can also see the location of the colony within the hive.
It's amazing for our students to be able to see inside the hive and learn about it and make observations, even in the dead of winter, when normally we would have very little information to go on to know what's happening inside.
Using the camera, if we see that the colony is lower in the boxes, they're still working on their own honey supplies. If we see the colony begin to move up in the boxes, we can assume that they're out of honey and are now eating the sugar that we give them as an emergency back up source of food. If we see this, we can monitor them more closely and continue to give them more food so that we can avoid the colony starving to death.
This amazing technology will give us another tool to ensure the well"bee"ing of some of our favorite environmental teachers.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Stephanie
The Science of Syrup
Funded Oct 23, 2020What an amazing spring! With such a rough last year, both staff and students rejoiced at the opportunity for a sense of "normalcy". And our annual maple syrup project, which might be abnormal in a traditional school setting, is what we're all about here! Project-based, inquiry-based learning with an environmental theme is just getting back to the basics for us. And so having the opportunity to take our yearly sap to syrup adventure to the next level with an outdoor evaporator was a dream come true!
After collecting the cinder blocks and setting them up on a chilly March morning, it was time for students to collect the fuel we would need to cook down sap that was about 98 percent water, down to approximately 66 percent water. In other words, an "obscene" amount of firewood would be needed! Heading out into the woods students returned with armfuls of sticks and branches, a process that would need to be repeated several times over the course of the project. 3rd grade is our traditional student body for this project, however, with Distance Learning last year, our current 4th graders never had the chance to work on it, and so were gladly included this year to make up for it!
When the firewood was ready to go (a somewhat difficult task after a day of cold rain!) we were ready to set it ablaze. And although it was a slow start to get the fire hot enough, eventually our sap started boiling away, which was good because we had almost 30 gallons of it to get through!
Students were able to come out to the evaporator and help with the collection of firewood (after weeks of collecting sap from the trees), and they watched in amazement as the clear liquid slowly and steadily turned darker and darker. They were fascinated by the furnace and the heat it produced, especially when they were able to experience it first hand with a mid-project marshmallow roast! Collecting their own roasting sticks, students were warned that this would be the fastest cook-time they had ever experienced with marshmallows. On average, over the extremely hot coals, it took about 8 seconds for golden brown perfection!
To get our 30 gallons boiled down, we spent four 12-hour days tending the fire, replenishing the sap, and collecting more firewood. We've now completed our outdoor boiling adventure and it's time to complete the process by boiling the last little bit indoors on a stove where the heat is easier to monitor, and the finished syrup can be bottled under sanitary conditions. This is currently the only step of the process that our students aren't able to witness first hand and assist with, and we're hoping that going into the future we'll be able to rely on amazing donors like you to help us get the supplies we need to do that last step with our students, so they can really get the full experience.
With the project wrapping up, our students now look forward to the fruits of their labor, an outdoor pancake party where they'll taste the syrup that came from sap! Being able to see how nature can provide will hopefully be a long-lasting memory for our students, and in turn will help them to become responsible stewards of the environment that we rely so heavily on. Not only will they never look at a tree the same way again, so too do we hope that they will be able to see themselves in the rich and long-standing tradition of maple sugaring, and know that they are now a part of that history.”
With gratitude,
Ms. Stephanie
This classroom project was brought to life by OshKosh B'gosh.