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LEEEP (Learning About the Environment through Experiential Education Projects)
LEEEP is currently in its eleventh year at Marion Cross School. The program seeks to engage children in appreciation, understanding, and inquiry about their local natural world, and our collective responsibility towards it.
Each grade level at Marion Cross School studies a particular environmental habitat. Grade 1 studies the meadow ecosystem; Grade 2 visits Blood Brook; Grade 3 explores and investigates the forest habitat; Grade 4 visits ponds, beaver ponds, vernal pools, and bogs; Grade 5 studies the macro invertebrate population of Blood Brook and conducts an annual water quality survey; Grade 6 learns about the marine environment with their classroom teachers, and visits the Seacoast Science Center. Locally, sixth graders go out to the forest to practice math skills by calculating cord wood volumes and sustainable harvest amounts. The Coordinator, Lindsay Putnam, is available to help classroom teachers with these studies, and assist with curriculum development and resources.
Field trips are hands-on science investigations. Students explore, generate questions and hypotheses, collect data, discuss their findings, and develop new questions. Investigations include first graders measuring and comparing winter temperature differences between the air and the subnivean world of the meadow, and 
second graders making discoveries about stream organisms and the habitat zones in which they live. Third graders document forest animal tracks in the Nature Area; then in Technology class they organize that information, and learn how to ask questions of the data to understand animal populations and habitats. Fourth graders might discover that the dissolved oxygen content or turbidity levels of a pond are not within the ideal range for aquatic life, and investigate what might be causing that result. Fifth grade students hypothesize the water quality index of Blood Brook based on organism observations, then proceed to collect and analyze data to determine the actual score.
An important component of the LEEEP program is environmental stewardship. Each grade level does a stewardship and/or community service project in their habitat study area. Every year some annual projects are continued, and new projects are initiated. Annual projects include the fifth grade water quality study of Blood Brook, and the on-going vernal pool mapping project in fourth grade. The information from these two projects are shared with the Norwich Conservation Commission. In the case of the vernal pool mapping project, active breeding pools that fourth graders document are added to the town map. Another annual event is the second grade “Leave No Trace at the Stream” day, where all second graders learn how to be good stewards of stream habitat.
In spring 2008, 
all fifth grade students worked with the White River Partnership in their “Trees for Streams” project to plant several hundred new trees along a highly eroded branch of the White River. First graders have been “bird angels” for our winter population of Nature Area birds (spreading seed into first grade snow angel shapes out in the Meadow). Classes have painted and installed beautiful new trail markers for the Ballard and Nature Area trails, and pulled thousands of stems of invasive buckthorn.
Third grade students took the lead in the 2007 “Step It Up Day” event, carrying a representation of our unhealthy earth on a stretcher across the river to a rally at Dartmouth College. The whole school community comes together in the spring during a school “Earth Week” to practice and celebrate some kind of environmental stewardship. 
Past projects have included trash collection and inventorying, “green-up” at the public library, and bird house building for the Nature Area. Students share their projects and sing earthy songs together at an Earth Week Rep.
Lindsay continues to work with Rick Newton in Physical Education to teach students the art and sport of orienteering - map and compass navigation. Map reading is not only an important life skill, it is a fundamental tool for collecting scientific data. Lindsay and Rick have established an annual off-campus orienteering trip to test the map reading skills of all sixth graders before they graduate from MCS and go off into the world across the river!
These are a few examples of LEEEP projects and investigations. The program is a collaborative, cross-curricular venture which would not be successful without the efforts, energy, and support of teachers and educational assistants, parent volunteers, and community members. 
Thanks to all who have participated.
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Click here to read about Lindsay's connection with a Russian Outdoor Education Program.
