A greener schoolyard is where learning begins

@media only screen and (max-width: 600px) { .mob-pad { padding-left: 20px !important; padding-right: 20px !important; } .mob-img { width: 100% !important; max-width: 100% !important; } h1 { font-size: 22px !important; } h2 { font-size: 17px !important; } } A greener schoolyard is where learning begins More and more schools are replacing asphalt with trees, shrubs, and mini forests. That's great news, but a green schoolyard isn't the finish line. It's the starting point. The real value comes when students get to know their plants: what they're called, how they change with the seasons, and why they matter. This month, we visit a school arboretum in Washington, D.C., share our insights on STEM learning outdoors, and show how your school can get started for free. Success story Education Right outside the classroom door: the arboretum at E.L. Haynes For years, former teacher and educational arborist Sam Nelson dreamed of a school arboretum built for students and teachers rather than tourists or researchers. He found the right place at E.L. Haynes Public Charter School in Washington, D.C., a PreK–12 school with more than 1,100 students. The arboretum has 160 trees across more than 50 species and holds ArbNet Level I accreditation, the only school arboretum of its kind in the region. Every tree has a bilingual plant label with a QR code that links to lesson content and a digital map students can open on a phone, a tablet, or the classroom screen. With Plantsoon, Sam can catalog, label, and share everything in one place, saving the school time and money in their accreditation process and mapping efforts. The best part, though, happens between classes. Students now read the names of the trees they walk past every day, like the second grader who noticed the pawpaw had stopped flowering and wanted to know why. Read the full story See how one educator turned a campus into a living classroom.  Read the story → Looking ahead Is your school going green? Tell us about it We want to bring the Plantsoon app into more classrooms. This fall, we're running a first pilot in Belgium, where students search their schoolyard for woodlice (also known as pill bugs or roly-polies) and record every find in the app. Scientists then analyze the data, so students help with real research. And that's just the start. Soon, the app will support more types of observations, like measuring the trunk of a tree or following an apple tree from first blossom to ripe fruit. That way, there's always something to discover and measure, all school year long. Does your class work on a mini forest, a school garden, or the trees in your neighborhood? We'd love to hear about it. And if you have ideas for new observations or tips to make Plantsoon and our plant labels work better in class, let us know. Email us at hello@plantsoon.com. Your school could be the next one we feature. Insights STEM STEM beyond the lab bench: the schoolyard as a working lab Ask a child to draw a scientist, and you'll usually get a white coat, a test tube, and an indoor lab. Yet most schools already have a lab without a roof: the schoolyard. Students learn more STEM, and stay more engaged, when they get to measure, test, and build things themselves. And when schools use their green spaces for teaching, science gains the most, followed by math. Our new Insights article shows what each letter of STEM looks like outside, from recording when a tree buds and blooms to building a rain garden or weather station. Students log their observations digitally, measure tree trunks, and calculate growth, all with data they collect themselves. S phenology and ecosystems  ·  T mapping and data  ·  E rain gardens and compost  ·  M measuring and graphing Read the article → For schools Turn your schoolyard into a living classroom Plantsoon makes it easy to bring nature into everyday lessons. Students explore, take photos, and follow the plants around them throughout the year. Every plant, garden zone, or insect hotel gets its own page on an interactive map of your campus, which you can share in multiple languages. Our weatherproof Smart Garden Labels come with or without plant names. Leave the name off, and figuring out the plant becomes part of the lesson. Want to see how other schools use Plantsoon? Visit E.L. Haynes Public Charter School, John Carroll University, or Kansas State University Gardens. Get started this school year Start your Essential plan. It's free forever. Document up to 20 plants, share them on your school's own public page, and pin every plant on the map with GPS. No credit card needed, and setup takes less than a minute. FREE Create my free account → Aiming for ArbNet accreditation? Does your school have 25 or more labeled woody species? Then you can already qualify for ArbNet Level I. Our free Starter Package helps you get there.  Explore the Starter Package →