Exploring environmental science

Prior to the winter season, students at Haine Elementary and Middle School took their learning outdoors to learn the physical, emotional and behavioral benefits offered through nature. Haine Middle School teacher Mr. Ken Cahall led the outdoor education program, offering lessons and activities on categorization, monarch butterfly preservation, decomposition and dissection.

Elementary students were excited and eager to learn how to categorize objects based on color, shape and texture while fifth graders got a “magnified” view into the decomposition process, learning the important role detritivores play in keeping our planet clean! Students scanned for millipedes, earthworms, isopods, slugs and other detritivores which break down organic material, returning nutrients to the soil.

Haine Middle School conservationists did their part to preserve the declining Monarch butterfly population by creating large plots of milkweed for developing caterpillars. Being the sole source of food for Monarch caterpillars, students planted seeds this fall and will design pollinator gardens in the spring to help provide nectar for adult butterflies and other pollinators. As a special bonus, these garden spaces will provide hands-on observation areas for third grade classes studying butterfly lifecycles and for world language classes exploring the great Monarch migration!

Learning didn’t stop with students! Over 50 Haine Middle School students and their families participated in an afterschool program focused on how owl adaptations like feather structure, large stationary eyes, and offset ears help owls hunt and locate prey. Mr. Cahall added, “The highlight of the program was when families dissected owl pellets to identify bones which determined what their owl had eaten!”