Namaste Montessori School

2018 Challenge Runner Up

Namaste Montessori School
Goffstown, New Hampshire

During our first year of garden creation we set a vision and goals through a grant with the NH Audubon Society and the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service to:

Create a healthy ecosystem for our area:
• Supporting migratory birds necessary for controlling insect populations, and
• Providing hands-on, immersive curricula for students.

To accomplish these goals, the school community created a pollinator peace garden, with students fully immersed in the process of planning and caring for a healthy ecosystem. They began the planning stage by
• Measuring the garden space;
• Researching a variety of plant species and cataloguing their sun and soil needs, and how the particular species attracts pollinators. Their research books have been added to our classroom library;
• Researching beneficial bird species and cataloguing their song, their favorite food, and their habitat. These research books have also been added to our classroom library.

The implementation phase saw the children’s research applied during a field trip to Uncanoonuc Mountain Perennials. There, students were able to use their research to identify and purchase the plant species studied in class. A big thank you to Nettie Rynearson and her team for welcoming us and providing an amazing horticultural field trip experience. Following the outing, the children returned to school with their parents and planted their variety in the garden. The children continued to care for their plants through the completion of the school year.

When we returned to school in September, the children resumed care of the garden and curricula immersion:
• Students harvested and arranged flowers to beautify our classroom.
• We studied a variety of butterflies that visited our garden and observed differences in their wings.
• We ran away from a few bees but were grateful for their work in the garden!
• All friends enjoyed bird watching and writing down observations to share with the class.
• Lower elementary friends further studied the external parts and body functions of birds.
• As the leaves began to change, friends in the primary classroom collected and classified leaves as simple or complex. The lower elementary followed suit with more advanced classification of leaves as spatulate, oblong, etc.
• This spring, friends will enjoy botany lessons and experiments related to the functions of plants.

The second year of the garden was all about keeping up interest and love of the garden. We had a busy year focused on pollinators. We accomplished:

• Built and installed three bird observation benches.
• Planted 250 tulips, crocus, and daffodil bulbs.
• Planted annuals to support pollinators.
• Purchase evergreen species for habitat protection for bird population throughout winter months.
• 21 Bird houses built by a parent to share with families.
• Fostered 20 monarch larvae to butterfly stage.
• Replaced perennials and invested in a non-invasive milkweed species.
• Recognized as a Monarch Way Station from monarchwatch.org.
• Provided a student driven hands-on, immersive curricula that expanded our current language, science, math, zoology, and botany curriculum.

If we were to be fortunate to receive the Green Thumb Challenge, funds would be utilized to continue the maintenance of the garden, replace any winter loss of plants, purchase supplies for a plant sale in order to expand our community efforts. The children would like to hold a plant sale of perennial plants in need of dividing and seedlings they will grow in the spring. They wish to donate the proceeds back to the NH Audubon to support the grant program that allows these amazing garden projects to start and continue for other schools.

We would also like to create a partnership with our local town and garden club to donate plants to beautify our local community and continue to grow our footprint supporting pollinators.