Springfield students creating outdoor lab with 'butterfly garden'

An empty garden space in a quiet courtyard behind Union Street School will soon transform into an outdoor science laboratory for Springfield students.
http://eagletimes.villagesoup.com/p/springfield-students-creating-outdoor-lab-with-butterfly-garden/1184868

Springfield students creating outdoor lab with 'butterfly garden' By Chris Garofolo | May 20, 2014 Photo by: Chris Garofolo Vanessa Stern, far left, and her third grade students at Union Street School in Springfield. Her class is one of four at the school that is helping to create and maintain a butterfly garden that will help attract pollinators to the site. SPRINGFIELD — An empty garden space in a quiet courtyard behind Union Street School will soon transform into an outdoor science laboratory for Springfield students. Science teacher Vanessa Stern said the school’s entire third-grade class is working on a culminating project where students are creating a butterfly garden in an effort to attract pollinators to the Union Street campus. The steady decline of butterflies and bees in the natural world prompted Stern to incorporate the creation of a garden as part of her Interdependence in Ecosystems teachings that will allow her class to study the changing environment. Eighty six third-grade students (21 in her classroom) and four science students are participating in the project. To date, a circular garden pattern divided with an X-shaped pathway into four equally-sized wedges sits idle in the school courtyard. There is one portion for each of the third grade classes to allow the four educators to blueprint their own design. “I felt that it would work better if they kind of had their own that teachers could work on with their students,” Stern said. “I wanted the circle because I envisioned the walkways and I envisioned four quadrants because each science class is going to own a piece and kind of design it and have ownership over it even though it’s one community garden.” It is part of a unit she has developed through the Upper Valley Linkages for Environmental Literacy, a professional development initiative at the Four Winds Nature Institute. The project has received support from the Springfield Garden Club, who donated $800 plus labor and recommendations for the soil and plants. Many of the other materials were donated as well and the district’s maintenance staff helped fashion the garden with the students. “That has been an amazing [gift] from the community and for us,” Stern said. The hope is to get the flowers in the ground by the end of the month. Each upcoming third grade class will then have access to the butterfly garden, turning it into an open-air knowledge corridor “They’re going to be using this as their science lab over the next so many years,” Stern said. Her classroom is equally excited about the project. The butterfly garden proposal has resonated with the children since the science teachers built a curriculum around it. “It’s been funner than being cooped up inside,” said third-grader Zinny H. The best part of gardening with the adults was mixing the soil, she said. Her classmate Gwen S. cannot wait to see all the colors and walk through the garden’s walking path. While the students have expressed some concern that others may play sports nearby and potentially undo all their hard work, they are more excited about planting some brightly-colored flowers with their teacher. “I’m going to be really excited because we’re going to get a lot of butterflies because we’re going to be planting a lot of flowers and it’s going to be really fun,” said third-grader Catrina G. “I hope that a lot of butterflies come to our garden.” The students, taking turns telling the Eagle Times about the flora species that they have looked at for the garden, have been studying how organisms change with their environments and the importance of pollinators. They are also getting a first-hand sense of being active and stewards of the land. Books about butterflies are neatly organized in the classroom. Dozens of plants and examples of flowers to draw pollinators like butterflies and bees sit on a back table. “We are all pollinators,” said Spencer D., another of Stern’s students, listing examples. “There’s butterflies and bees, but there’s much more; there’s animals and wind. There’s ants, there’s us [as humans].” For the past few weeks, they have been researching what plants and flowers attract pollinators to present their findings to the garden club. “Without pollinators, we wouldn’t have plants. I think 80 percent of our food source depends on bees for pollination, so we would lose our food sources,” Sterns said. “When pollinators decline, we all have to worry.”