Robeson's Outback Nature Center

The Robeson Outback Nature Center includes a butterfly house, bluebird trail, nature trail, outdoor classroom, and school garden.  All of these outdoor resources are used to deliver our curriculum in a variety of fun and exciting experiences.  Not only does it instill a love of nature and the outdoors in our students, but in enables us to integrate reading, writing, and the arts with science.

In the butterfly house we raise monarchs and swallowtails.  Many of these eggs are collected in our school garden.  We also raise the host plants in the garden which helps us to feed the larva through the various lifecycles.  We tag our monarchs as part of Monarch Watch.  Mealworms are also raised in the butterfly house and in classrooms.  This allows our students to study another lifecycle and provides food for the feeders on our bluebird trail.

Bluebird boxes on the bluebird trail are maintained and monitored by individual classrooms.  The feeders along the trail are supplied with mealworms from the mealworms we raise to study lifecycles.

The nature trail and outdoor classroom are used for a variety of reading, writing, and art lessons.  Part of the trail has been set up as a self guided nature trail with a brochure and markers researched and written by third grade students.

The school garden is used to raise a variety of plants that include vegetables, flowers, host plants, and other wildlife attractors.  Classrooms adopt raised garden beds to maintain throughout the school year.  The garden includes a compost bin and a rain barrel to help teach sustainable gardening practices.  This year we have added monthly garden workshops offered during the school day to classrooms at all grade levels.  Each month during the workshops a new topic is explored in our garden area.  During the summer months, YMCA sumer camp students and the local Girl Scouts help to maintain the garden.  Moving forward we plan on increasing the composting to include the school cafeteria.  We also would like to start serving some of the vegetables from our school garden in the school cafeteria.