School Spotlight: It's In The Bag

The teachers at Cedar Grove Elementary School (Montgomery County, MD) have added a new bag of tricks to support the Maryland No Child Left Inside Coalition. Members of our school’s science committee created ‘Discovery Bags’ for each classroom. These bags contain tools to encourage outdoor discovery, such as trowels, magnifiers, collection holders, critter identifiers, and journaling materials.

The bags alone are a testament to our school’s commitment to encourage the whole community to embrace a greener lifestyle. A school-wide Science Lab logo competition was held early in the school year with the winning student-design printed on reusable grocery bags. The bags are currently being sold as a fund raiser for lab supplies. Our art teacher trimmed a set of these reusable bags for the classroom ‘Discovery Bags’ with room numbers and hand painted embellishments.

Our Principal, Lee Derby, encourages the development of environmental literacy by giving his full support of using the outdoors as a classroom. The ‘Discovery Bags’ make it easy to take advantage of outdoor experiences. Some teachers hang their bag on the knob of the classroom door. The message is: be ready for any opportunity to learn!

Claire participated in Teachable Science Workshops offered by the Audubon Naturalist Society where Instructor Lara Rosa shared the idea of creating ‘Discovery Bags’.