Below are maintenance tips and resources that you and your outdoor classroom planning committee can use to help sustain your outdoor learning stations and your outdoor classroom from year to year. Click on the ORANGE LINKS below:

Weekly Checklist | Learning Station Adoption & Maintenance Binders | Summer Checklist | Other Tips

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Weekly Maintenance Checklist Tips

Tip #1: Create a list of tasks that you need done multiple times per week such as picking up garbage, emptying the rain gauge, and recording the weather data. Example Weekly OC Maintenance Checklist: (Word Doc | PDF)

Tip #2: Ask students from your Outdoor Classroom/Wildlife/Gardening Club or another student club to assist with the Weekly Maintenance Checklist each week. Allow the students to rotate who is in charge of the checklist each week or each month.

Tip #3: Create a schedule so that the students check the outdoor classroom at least three times per week.

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Learning Station Adoption Program

Step 1: Create a list of learning stations that you would like to have teachers and their classes adopt for one semester. Example Learning Station Adoption Sign Up Sheet: (Word Doc | PDF)

Step 2: Pass around the Sign-up Sheet at the first faculty meeting in August so that teachers (or *club sponsors) can adopt a learning station for the fall semester.

• One class should adopt one learning station for one semester.
• There are only enough tasks for one class per learning station.
• One semester allows the class to feel ownership before allowing another class to adopt it the following semester.
• *For middle and high schools we recommend that learning stations are adopted by Planning Commitee teachers' classes, Clubs (Beta, Environmental, Ag, STEAM, etc.) or special classes (enrichment, SPED, etc.).

Step 3: Give each class that adopts a learning station the Maintenance Binder (see details below) for the learning station they are adopting. Each binder includes the fall and spring maintenace tips, observation forms, a plant ID map for the learning station, and other helpful resources (see details below).

Step 4: Share hands-on activities that the teachers can use in conjunction with the specific learning stations they adopted.

• For elementary schools, teachers from specific grade levels should adopt specific learning stations so they can use the learning station in conjunction with the Outdoor Classroom Field Investigation Activities (see list below) to help teach the Dept of Education's science standards for the grade they teach.
• For classes that want to adopt a raised bed garden to grow veggies or other annuals, share our Fall Veggie Gardening suggestions and our list of example Themed Gardens.

Learning Station	Grade Level	OC Field Investigation Activities
Sensory Garden	Kindergarten	Living or Nonliving?	Basic Needs of Living Things
Butterfly Garden	1st Grade	Comparing Adults to Offspring Activity	Animal Features & Adaptations
Pollinator Garden	2nd Grade	How Pollinators Pollinate Activity	Critter Characteristics & Habitats
Frog & Toad Habitat	3rd Grade	Comparing Life Cycles	Wildlife Habitat Checklist Activity
Songbird Habitat	4th Grade	Birds and Their Adaptations Activity	Parts of a Plant
Log Decomposition	5th Grade	Find a Food Chain Activity	Create a Food Web

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Learning Station	Fall Maintenance Tips	Spring Maintenance Tips
Butterfly Garden	Word | PDF	Word | PDF
Frog & Toad Habitat	Word | PDF	Word | PDF
Pollinator Garden	Word | PDF	Word | PDF
Sensory Garden	Word | PDF	Word | PDF
Songbird Habitat	Word | PDF	Word | PDF
Box Turtle Habitat	Word | PDF	Word | PDF

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• ACES's Gardening Calendar to create a calendar for activities such as soil testing, planting, pruning, fertilizing, and mulching for your shrubs, annuals and perennials, fruit and nut trees, and bulbs, roots, and tubers.
• ACES's Basics of Fall Vegetable Gardening to plant, grow and harvest fall and winter vegetables with your students.