• Teaching and Learning: Schoolyard habitats offer many teaching and learning opportunities in English, science, mathematics, history, geography, social studies and art. The process of planning, creating and using a habitat provides children with unique hands-on experiences. Please visit our Long Term Connections section to learn more about how to connect your habitat project into the Voluntary State Curriculum and to find examples of standards based habitat activities.

• Improved Student Performance : There is extensive research demonstrating that the use of the environment as a focal point of teaching measurably improves student performance. Please visit our research page to view research studies and articles on the value of environmental education and schoolyard habitats.

• Improved Habitat: Schoolyard habitat projects provide habitat for local and migratory wildlife including songbirds, shorebirds, small mammals, reptiles, amphibians and insects. Ideally, these habitats provide additional environmental benefits by helping to mitigate problems caused by development and impervious surfaces.   For example, students can conduct an assessment of their schoolyard to strategically place a habitat project to act as a vegetative buffer for nearby streams, reducing pollution reaching these waterways. By choosing an appropriate type of habitat project, schools can actively improve the environment while providing important learning opportunities for students.

• Financial benefits: One lesser-known benefit of schoolyard habitat projects is the potential for financial savings. Many schools have saved significant funds by utilizing habitats on their school grounds in a variety of ways.   Simply observing and studying the development of animals and plants in an onsite habitat is an exciting and inexpensive alternative to purchasing biological materials for the classroom. Schoolyard habitats also provide opportunities to help students meet service learning graduation requirements without the cost of off-site transportation.   Furthermore, schools can realize significant long term maintenance savings by converting expansive lawns into more natural, native habitat landscaping features which do not require the expense of mowing, fertilize and chemical herbicides and pesticides.

• Maryland Green School Awards Program : The Maryland Green Schools Awards Program encourages teachers and students to use their school site and curricular instruction to prepare students to understand and act on environmental challenges facing all Marylanders. Creating and utilizing schoolyard habitat projects helps schools to meet the program's requirement that they model environmental best management practices (BMPs) in building and landscape design, operation and maintenance. Furthermore, schoolyard habitats provide an excellent opportunity to build and maintain partnerships with the local community to enhance environmental learning and to implement projects that result in a healthier environment. We encourage you to learn more about the benefits of becoming a Maryland Green School.

• Stewardship: During the formative years of life, students develop perceptions and values about their environment. If designed and managed properly, schoolyards can provide students with a powerful example of land stewardship. Conversely, it is less likely that students will develop a sense of stewardship if attending a barren, poorly managed schoolyard. Learn more about stewardship opportunities by visiting The Chesapeake Bay Foundation's Student Leadership Program.

• Social development: Experts know that young children are driven to explore, discover and play while refining motor skills. A well-designed schoolyard including a diversity of natural areas, allows students to exercise these innate needs leading to a happier and more fulfilled childhood. Older students and adults also benefit. Research shows that most people are more relaxed in a natural landscape.
  

"As a child, one has that magical capacity to move among the many eras of the earth; to see the land as an animal does; to experience the sky from the perspective of a flower or a bee; to feel the earth quiver and breathe beneath us; to know a hundred different smells of mud and listen unselfconsciously to the soughing of the trees."

-- Valerie Andrews
A Passion for this Earth

Also See:

- Benefits of becoming a Maryland Green School

- Benefits of attending the MAEOE Conference