Wildlife Tag
OC Maintenance Tips & Resources
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
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.
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 Sheet: (Word Doc | PDF)
Step 2: Pass around the Sign-up Sheet at the faculty meeting in August so that teachers can adopt a learning station for the fall semester.
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: Ask the classes to return their maintenance binders to the Outdoor Classroom Planning Committee at the end of the semester, so the Maintenance Binders can be redistributed to the teachers who adopt the learning stations the following semester.
Step 5: Scan all of the Observation Forms (Word Doc | PDF) for all of the learning stations, and then upload them to your OC Records Hub found at the bottom of your school's Outdoor Classroom Webpage (use our Alabama OC Schools Map to get to your school's webpage).
Repeat Steps 1-5 for the spring semester
Maintenance Binder Tips: Put each of the documents in a sheet protector, and then put them all in a 3-ring binder. Contact your AWF Outdoor Classroom Consultant for assistance to create maintenance binders for your school.
Summer Maintenance Checklist Tips
Tip #1: Create a checklist of weekly tasks that need to be taken care of throughout the summer. Example Summer OC Maintenance Checklist: (Word Doc | PDF)
Tip #2: Recruit students and their parents, student clubs, year-round school staff, community volunteers, or fellow teachers to sign-up for one week to assist with summer tasks.
Other Quick Maintenance Tips
Quick Tip #1: If you want to know how to care for a specific plant, including how much to water it, visit our Dig Into Plants webpage.
Quick Tip #2: Use the Search feature on the Alabama Cooperative Extension System's website to find a wide variety of gardening and maintenance tips including:
Quick Tip #3: Download the "How to Protect Your Plants from the Cold" (PDF) to learn more about how cold weather can harm your plants and how to protect them.
Quick Tip #4: Download the "Tips to Control Aphids on Milkweed" to learn how to control these common pests.
Quick Tip #5: Learn how to Reduce Vandalism (even when it's unintentional vandalism) in your outdoor classroom.
Quick Tip #6: Use our checklists and forms to hold an Outdoor Classroom Work Day to tidy up your OC, update signage, move plants around, trim bushes, pull weeds, and tend to any other annual maintenance tasks.
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Weekly Checklist | Learning Station Adoption & Maintenance Binders | Summer Checklist | Other Tips
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.
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 Sheet: (Word Doc | PDF)
Step 2: Pass around the Sign-up Sheet at the faculty meeting in August so that teachers 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 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.
- 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.
| 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 |
- 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: Ask the classes to return their maintenance binders to the Outdoor Classroom Planning Committee at the end of the semester, so the Maintenance Binders can be redistributed to the teachers who adopt the learning stations the following semester.
Step 5: Scan all of the Observation Forms (Word Doc | PDF) for all of the learning stations, and then upload them to your OC Records Hub found at the bottom of your school's Outdoor Classroom Webpage (use our Alabama OC Schools Map to get to your school's webpage).
Repeat Steps 1-5 for the spring semester
Learning Station Maintenance Binders
Each Learning Station Maintenance Binder should include the following:
Each Learning Station Maintenance Binder should include the following:- Observations Form (Word Doc | PDF) for Current Semester
- Plant ID Map (Word Doc | PDF)
- Quick Fact Sheets for the Plant Species in the Learning Station or Garden
- Leaf Characteristics and Flower Shape Charts
- Fall Maintenance Tips for the Learning Station (Available below)
- Spring Maintenance Tips for the Learning Station (Available below)
- Blank Observations Form(s) (Word Doc | PDF) for Future Adoptions
- Past Observations Forms for your Records
- Relevant Publication and Other Resources
| 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 |
Maintenance Binder Tips: Put each of the documents in a sheet protector, and then put them all in a 3-ring binder. Contact your AWF Outdoor Classroom Consultant for assistance to create maintenance binders for your school.
Summer Maintenance Checklist Tips
Tip #1: Create a checklist of weekly tasks that need to be taken care of throughout the summer. Example Summer OC Maintenance Checklist: (Word Doc | PDF)
Tip #2: Recruit students and their parents, student clubs, year-round school staff, community volunteers, or fellow teachers to sign-up for one week to assist with summer tasks.
Other Quick Maintenance Tips
Quick Tip #1: If you want to know how to care for a specific plant, including how much to water it, visit our Dig Into Plants webpage.
Quick Tip #2: Use the Search feature on the Alabama Cooperative Extension System's website to find a wide variety of gardening and maintenance tips including:
- 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.
Quick Tip #3: Download the "How to Protect Your Plants from the Cold" (PDF) to learn more about how cold weather can harm your plants and how to protect them.
Quick Tip #4: Download the "Tips to Control Aphids on Milkweed" to learn how to control these common pests.
Quick Tip #5: Learn how to Reduce Vandalism (even when it's unintentional vandalism) in your outdoor classroom.
Quick Tip #6: Use our checklists and forms to hold an Outdoor Classroom Work Day to tidy up your OC, update signage, move plants around, trim bushes, pull weeds, and tend to any other annual maintenance tasks.