Fairchild Tropical Garden Challenge 2023

Our elementary learners had a strong year of participation in the Fairchild Tropical Garden Challenge 2023. The Fairchild Challenge is an award-winning, interdisciplinary, environmental science competition designed to engage students to explore the natural world. The program has been recognized as a benchmark for exceptional STEM education and for empowering PreK-12th grade students to become the next generation of scientists, researchers, educated voters, policymakers, and environmentally-minded citizens.

The learners started the year by designing and making pollinator pads for solitary bees and learning about the variety and importance of beneficial pollinators. Then they designed vertical garden systems, drawing plans and writing about how their system functions. This was followed by constructing prototypes of different systems. The learners recently completed the School Garden Challenge. This is a yearlong school-wide challenge where they cultivate the garden space planting vegetables, greens, fruit-bearing plants, and garden herbs. They nurture and harvest them and then make recipes that incorporate what they grow in the garden. These recipes incorporate literacy and sequence writing, illustration, art, and design. 

Experiential, real-world learning is central to our curriculum, allowing our learners to understand academic material in a greater context and recognize the impact they can have on communities beyond their classroom walls. Our learners know who they are, thrive in community, and actively engage in the world as their best selves.