Hiking, Learning, Reading in Meadows

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This group of six leadership students had some great successes this year. One of the biggest accomplishments was the installation of an owl box in our neighboring meadows. Our school is next to a 58 acre land conservancy. We have many visitors from the meadows on our field. As you may guess, many ground squirrels, gophers, and moles don't know what a fence means and tend to dig in our field. Some days students may encounter a rodent visitor while playing soccer, kickball, etc. We wanted a natural solution for this problem. We discovered that in the natural food chain/web, the owl is the predator of these rodents. After much work with Ron Singer, David White, Greg Lepine, and the climber, we were able to have the owl box installed in the meadow. There were many needs for the right tree: the box needed to have a direct flight path, be 100% in the shade, and be 20 feet in the tree. We were so excited to see the climber install the box, and are hoping for a family of owls to move in!

Another great success was our reading in the meadows program. We needed chairs for at least a class of 30. This team wrote a letter to the entire school and their families to ask for donations of beach/camping chairs. We had about 12 chairs donated. Then one of our PTA parents, Gina Braget, wrote an Optimist Club grant to ask for funds to buy the chairs. It worked and soon we received 35 matching chairs, that had a strap for students to carry them on their shoulder. We were so excited about this accomplishment! Now classes can check out chairs and go to the meadow to read. We have 53 chairs so far with the donations and the grant. Almost enough for two classes!

We also continue to add to our bird watching kits. With binoculars ( we got a Ojai Education grant to buy 25 more binoculars) for our kits. They continue to be popular with classes. The kits include binoculars, bird list chart, colored bird identification pictures, 3 pencils, field guides, and GPS devices. These are also popular for classes to check out and take out to the meadows.

Finally, we collect plastic bottles to fund some or our programs. Student leadership collects the bags, and we have parents help bring them to the recycle center in exchange for money. As the year progresses we often need funds to purchase replacement items for kits, etc.

This was 14 bags of recycle. Good Job Student Leadership!