Dragonflies have found the pond.

HERE BE DRAGONS

Tolkien’s Smaug was a terrible beast indeed. In some ways, so are the large insects that spend their adolescence underwater and bear the same name.  DRAGON.  In recent days it has become harder and harder to find our American Toad Tadpoles. At first we wondered if turning off the stream might have caused them stress and led to their demise. New evidence has come to light, however, as this week there were numerous sightings of the fierce predator in our pond.

Dragonfly Nymphs

They are large. They are quick.  They are voracious.

Currently they are at the top of the Food Web in our pond.

See if you can spot one! Or Two! Or Five!
Just In....young American Toad found by four-year-old: 

Where's the Water?

Perhaps you have noticed that our pond and stream are not totally natural.

It's true. The system we have in place is designed to mimic a naturally occurring watershed but isn't one.

Hidden beneath the stones at the Northeast edge of the pond is a small pump that continually cycles the water from the pond uphill to the beginning of the stream. The water then flows downhill, over our waterfall, and back to the pond. During this process, water will be continually evaporating, just like it does from any natural waterway.

Just like any other waterway, rains will add to the flow of our stream. In our case, rain that falls in the Outdoor classroom will enter our pond, but the watershed also includes the roof of Kovler Gym. When rains falls on the roof, it is fed into our stream through the terra-cotta colored pipe near the water fall. In periods where there is no rainfall, we can also add water from the city water supply if needed throughout the small white pipe.

Water is tenacious, and will find any way that it can to travel downhill with the pull of gravity. Any small crack in the seal under the stream and pond will be exploited and expanded by water.

This week we do not expect a rain event, so we are running a test to be sure that no such leaks are occurring. In that time, the stream pump will be shut off to minimize the amount of evaporation so we can monitor the level in the pond more closely.

Once we are confident the pond is holding the water, the pump will be engaged again, and our stream will flow once more.

Week Two at the Outdoor Classroom

The Outdoor Classroom hosted students from Nursery School through High School! Highlights: 11th and 12th graders had the objective of exploring patterns, periodic functions, waves. Students explored the space and found patterns. They also took time to draw periodic functions. 

5th grade science (3 classes) students documented details of the space with words and objective evidence, they noted scale, focused on the area along creek and SW walls.  

Buddy Group N4 (Movrich) and 2nd Grade (Mahrino) noticed that "when you tap on a rock the tadpoles come out."  Other sightings: snails,crickets, grasshoppers, bugs with wings. 

Bloom and Mitzenbacher (5th grade) had the objective of learning what it means to be both "outdoors" and "in a classroom."  What can we learn from our surroundings?  Students also had a notebook exercise that asked the students to "think like a scientist and think like an artist."

Mandel and Dodds classroom shared the space to work on the concept of becoming friends with new people and places. 

Water is Life

History and Philosophy of the Outdoor Classroom

History

In 2010 a small group of faculty began our journey into imagining an outdoor learning space. Gerold Hanck, former third grade science teacher, came to Sylvie’s office with an idea:  Pebbles could be re-imagined as an outdoor space where faculty and students can have the opportunity to learn across all ages and disciplines within an ever changing, ever growing outdoor setting.  The opportunity is now real.  The stones from Pebbles remain, as well as some large sections of a Giant Burr Oak that once stood where the Gordon Parks Arts Hall stands now, anchoring the new classroom in the History of Lab's outdoor spaces.

The Outdoor Classroom Professional Growth Group developed the following to guide our welcoming of the space.

Fundamental Principles for the Outdoor Classroom

• 
  The Outdoor Classroom is an aesthetically pleasing space that uses the outdoors as a learning environment, a curricular resource, an inspiration, and a contemplative refuge for use by all the Lab School’s students, faculty, staff, and parents.
  Purpose
  As the year progresses and the teachers and students explore the many ways that we can utilize the space, we will also be exploring opportunities to involve parents and families, the other key component to the Lab School community.
• The Outdoor Classroom is a place of restoration.  It is a human-made framework that together we will nurture across time as a space filled as much as possible with nature’s footprint.  The space is alive, growing, and developing.   People experience natural cycles:  fertilization, growth, development, decay, and death, through their interaction with living, native organisms, both flora and fauna.
• We all play a stewardship role in the development, growth, and maintenance of the space.  With active participation and a sense of ownership, students will see it as more than a pretty place.  We will witness and help make possible some of the various ways that animals and plants slowly fill the space, establish niches, and make it home.
• The space is a beginning of a journey, and not a destination.  It is to be one stop on a much longer trip towards the development of an outdoor curriculum that can begin to redefine and make real abstract ideas like "sustainability", "ecology", "environment", "native and non-native", "natural", “adaptation”, “survival of the fittest”, “evolution”, and "beauty."
  

The purpose of the Outdoor Classroom is to incorporate and enhance outdoor learning experiences for all UCLS curricular areas across divisions. The possibilities for the Outdoor Classroom are varied and numerous. The Outdoor Classroom presents an interdisciplinary ecosystem that demonstrates the connectedness of ideas and theories, across all subject matter, as parts of a dynamic, systemic whole.  

As the year progresses, the teachers and students will explore the many ways they can use the space. In the spring we will also be working to create opportunities to involve parents and families, another key component of the LAB community.

1st Photo of the New Outdoor Classroom at the Historic Campus

This Fall we will all be given the opportunity to visit the Outdoor Classroom at The Lab Schools. This is a beginning and right now The Outdoor Classroom is a still a raw scar upon the land. Stones and earth where the playground fondly known as "Pebbles" stood for years.

Much like the entire city of Chicago that surrounds it, this small place is drastically different from the  swampy marshland that was here in the days before the city.

But the nature of Nature is change. Constant, unending change.

Scars heal.
Life will spring up in this place anew.
From Empty to Full.
From Desolate to Verdant.
With rain, and sun, and time, this place will transform yet again.
We can feel connected to the land as it renews, and be changed along with it.