Photo courtesy of Judy Corker
A project funded by a grant from the Hanover Master Gardeners is teaching Battlefield Park Elementary School students about math and science. More photos on Community, page 9.
Published: October 28, 2009
By Melody Kinser .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
To Judy Corker, creating a butterfly garden on the grounds of Battlefield Park Elementary School provided an effective – and entertaining – way to study.
As the gifted and talented resource collaboration teacher, Corker works with students in kindergarten through fifth grade.
During the 2008-2009 school year, she applied for a $500 grant funded through the Hanover Master Gardeners program. Her goal was to use the money for a project for second-graders.
“You had to write up your proposal and tell them exactly what you were going to do to spend the money,” she said.
According to Corker, the Master Gardeners had a committee that went through the applications, which were “numbered so they wouldn’t know who was the applicant.”
She learned on Jan. 20 her application had been approved.
Dubbed “The Wonderful World of Butterflies,” the benefits of the grant came to fruition on Monday, Oct. 19, during a dedication ceremony.
Last spring, the second-graders were “researching plants and things to find out what they wanted in their garden. We specifically made them research host plants versus nectar plants, and they had to be sure that they had plants that were drought resistant. There were a lot of things they were looking for.”
While the second-graders were the primary target, Corker said it wouldn’t just apply to them. Based on the second-grade Standards of Learning, she said the garden “can be used for seasons, any study with seeds, you can look at butterflies, bees, birds and all kinds of things that come in there.
A butterfly shape was chosen because of geometry, which offers the upper grades “different kinds of triangles, hexagon, all kinds of angles. Aand the question is: Is there symmetry if you actually looked at the plants? What’s on one side, [what’s on] the other side.”
“There’s a whole lot of math and science that can be integrated, then you can add your language by writing — pick a spot and write,” Corker said.
For the fifth-graders, she said she “thought about geography. They have to learn about longitude and latitude. Last year we used GPS (Global Positioning System) to find clues around the yard, now we can tie them to the garden. So here’s really no grade level that can’t use it, so that’s pretty much why I chose that.”
The project was submitted to the Hanover County School Board for approval, with work starting on May 26. That day, stones were removed, the circumference was marked and tilling got under way. Grass was removed on May 28 and beds were made and plants were purchased on May 30. Planting began on June 2.
On June 10 and 11, fifth-graders added the mulch. The 2008-2009 term came to a close on June 12.
“Everything was finished by the time we left school last year,” Corker said.
Hanover Master Gardeners’ top two officers – president Sherry Hagerty and vice president Judy Durant – attended the dedication.
Three local busi-nesses – San-dy’s Plants in Mechanicsville, Virginia Wood Processing in Ashland and Daco Interiors in Ashland — provided support.
Employees at Sandy’s Plants, Corker said, “were fabulous” in helping with the project. Virginia Wood Processing donated mulch; the only stipulation was the school needed to transport it. “To me, that’s a huge donation,” she added. Daco Interiors is a little closer to home for Corker. Her husband Dan and son Eddie operate the business and used their trucks to bring to mulch to the site.
Dan and Eddie also did the tilling, assisted by Wayne Saunders, a BPES teacher. Eddie and Kevin Rogers donated their time on May 30 to build the structure.
“The thing that’s so nice about the outdoor classroom is that you’ve got their attention because they’re interested in something besides paper/pencil. They will get down there with magnifying glasses and look for things.
“We were really surprised to see how the kids could see how the plants were chewed up from the caterpillars, see how we actually had two chrysalis and one of it was opened and one of them still had the butterfly in it.The only thing they didn’t see was the egg stage,” she said.
In her grant proposal, Corker said they would using butterfly pavilions, which is like a net. “They send you the larva with food and you feed them and put them in this thing and they turn into a chrysalis and then they hatch and they release the butterflies into the garden.” This allows the students “to see the whole process through the pavilions.”
“If you can get them outside,” Corker said, “it’s just so much better.”
