In hopes of Hamilton Elementary/Middle School achieving Maryland Green School Status by March 2016, the Green Club has started to take action! The Green Club consists of 30 1st grade to 7th grade students. All are welcome here, no child is too young or old!
The green club has worked toward many different Best Management Practices during the first few months of school, including certifying a Monarch Way Station and learning about migration, composting, mulching, and soil composition. Certifying to become a Monarch Way Station involved the students surveying the schoolyard to find out what types of host and nectar plants were around for monarchs. We played a migration game to show the struggles that monarchs face during their long travel to Mexico.
For our composting lesson, Naturalist Intern Gracie Abel led the children through a fun lesson about vermicomposting. This kind of composting uses worms! The worms eat different types of waste and turn it into a very rich soil. The students learned what types of things worms could eat via a relay race and got a close-up observation of Irvine’s traveling vermicomposting bin.
In the future, we hope to build bluebird houses around the school and garden. Stay tuned!
