Howe Green Team

Butterfly Garden – Our soil for our butterfly garden is being delivered on Wednesday May 1st at 4 PM.  I need parent (and kid) helpers who can help bring it from the parking lot to the garden.  We will have a cart and it is in bags.  Please email me at keeblek@dearbornschools.org if you are able to help.  THANKS!!!!

Thank you to all who showed up to our Green Team/Butterfly Garden meeting.  We had a great turn out of green teamers, parents, girl scouts, Ms. Dudek and my daughter Elizabeth.  We did planning for the garden design, flowers to plant, fundraising and garden stones and discussed our new location.

Luna announced that she and her grandmother help raise over $100 by selling milkweed seeds, candles and asking for donations!  Great Job!  Thanks for all your help!!!

New Location – Our previous location didn’t work out. So we are now planning on planting our garden in the courtyard in the middle of the Montessori/Special Ed wing of the building.

Garden Stones – We have planned a fundraiser the will help everyone be part of our garden.  Ms. Dudek our Art teacher has volunteered to help with this fundraiser and she is currently creating a flyer.  Students will be donate money to create an individual, family or class Garden Stepping stone.  Our current sizes we are discussing are 9×9 or 11×17.  They will be using cement and mosaic tiles to create a unique stone that represents themselves.  We will use the stones to create paths for people and wheelchairs to go in and around the garden.  Here is an example of what it might look like:

Fundraising – there are many ideas for fundraising including selling milkweed and flower seeds, bake sale, candy sale, movie/game night and Easter egg hunt.  Since we are having a Scholastic Book sale on March 20th-21st from 3:30-4:30.  This would be a great time for us to have one of our events.  Volunteers are needed from  Green Team and Girl Scouts to donate items to sale, and to help sell items, set up, clean up and supervise students during the sale.  Anything that is butterfly themed would be GREAT!  Here is a volunteer sign-up sheet.

Butterfly Garden Breaking Ground event – we would like to break ground on Earth Day, April 22nd 2 PM (weather permitting).  We will begin to prepare the garden for planting by digging up the grass, preparing the beds for planting and placing our new garden stones.  If it is warm enough we will start planting that day.  We need volunteers that can donate shovels and their time to help clear the land.  Here is a volunteer sign-up sheet.

Garden design and flowers – Students started drawing possible garden designs and discussed flowers to plant.

3/19 – is our next meeting.  Green team will be preparing for the upcoming sale on 3/20 and 3/21 – Volunteers are needed please see the sign up sheet above.

If you were not able to attend the meeting and would like to help with our garden please let me know.

Tuesday, March 5th is our Butterfly Garden planning meeting.  Parent are encouraged to come to help make our plans to start are garden.  We would love to start planting on Earth Day, April 22nd.  Please join us!

Wayne County Green School Logo Contest – The Green Team is participating in this contest.  Click on the this link to vote for your top 3 logo designs.  Vote Here   There is also a QR code to scan and vote on the Green Team bulletin board at school.   Please vote before 2/27/19.

Monarch Butterfly Garden and Waystation – we are continuing to make plans for our butterfly way station and garden.  Weather permitting we would love to break ground on Earth Day.  I need so parent volunteers that are good at gardening to help in planning, fundraising, buying or finding discounted or donations for plants, clearing the land to plant, and planting.  If you are interested in helping please let me know.   The girl scouts are joining us at our March 5th meeting to have a planning meeting for the garden.  It would be helpful to have any parent volunteers at that meeting.  I cannot do this big project alone, if I don’t get any helpers I will cancel the garden and maybe try again another year. If you can help us in any way please email me at keeblek@dearbornschools.org.

National Recycling Day – November 15th is National Recycling Day.  We would like to raise awareness for recycling and try to raise some more money for our butterfly way station.  If you would be able to help volunteer to run our table for an hour that afternoon please sign up with the link below.  If I don’t get enough volunteers we will cancel this event.  Please click here to volunteer to help run the table  for 1 hour with a partner on November 15.

A big THANK YOU to Luna’s grandma! She has been busy selling milkweed seeds and crandles for use.  She raise $56 more the Green Team!

Garden Planning – Today at Green Team we started planning our Butterfly Garden (Way Station for the Monarch Butterflies) that we hope to build in the spring.  Students research flowers that Monarchs like.  There is an assignment on Google Classroom for the students to finish researching we need to:

Find the best butterfly nectar plants to plant in our garden, they need to be good for Zone 5, we need to know when do they bloom, what is their size, cost and how many you will plant. Please draw a picture of your garden, label the names of the plants and where we will have paths and seats. What will you use for seats? How much will the entire garden cost? We want there to be something blooming from April until October. We need 2-4 nectar plants (flowers) for every milkweed we plant.