The Bobcat Sprouts Gardens are a welcoming and an inviting outdoor learning space for the students, staff and community at Marcia Buker School in Richmond, Maine to explore and enjoy, providing rich experiential learning in the arts, science, literacy, numeracy, healthy living and well being.
Bobcat Sprouts Gardens came into view in 2014 as the community came together with a vision for outdoor learning for all students at Marcia Buker Elementary School. After polling staff, students and our community it was agreed to build an outdoor classroom along with butterfly and caterpillar gardens to teach about the life cycle of plants, pollinator insects and to experience the beauty of our natural world. The students are excited to explore, wonder, research, draw, plant, write, harvest, observe, analyze, in the gardens.
Local businesses and parents donated materials and supported their efforts to get students outside. Police officers worked with students to measure and build the garden beds. Maine Master Gardeners, Androscoggin Soil and Water Conservation, Friends of Cobbossee Watershed, Wild Seed Project, Maine Ag in the Classroom, Maine School Garden Network, Maine Environmental Education Association, Tender Soles Farm, Upstream and the 5210 Nutrition Program joined their efforts to bring skills, talents and funding to Marcia Buker Elementary School.
The staff developed programs such as Garden Keepers, Story Keepers, Forest Fridays, Woodland Wednesdays and Naturalists on Duty which invited students to take leadership and stewardship roles in the school gardens and Tiny Forest Trails.
Students built a bathouse, pollinator houses, insect hotels, began a worm farm, chose stories for the story walk and made seed choices for the gardens. These efforts generated student achievement as children actively engaged in their education; measuring, building, writing, reading and learning numeracy as they planted, grew flowers for bouquets and harvested and shared our produce and seeds.
The school continued to build their program by adding a poem garden, an outdoor xylophone, a story walk trail, a sensory walk, eight vegetable garden beds, a sandbox and a dig bed. A two day festival called Plant a Seed Day was developed to further enhance the opportunities for outdoor learning by having students engage in six centers that explore planting, pollination, healthy soils and beneficial bugs. The gardens were also moved closer to the outdoor classroom and onto the playground so students had easy access to them and could independently and collaboratively work, play and learn in the gardens. Wonder what’s next?!
Want to know more?!
- Tina Wood twood@richmondpk12.org
- MSGN Garden Directory Listing
