A Doorway to Nature

Slide open the glass door to the patio, and Ginnie Leggat Donner’s fourth- and fifth-graders have an outdoor class that are teaching the most. A while ago, it was the variety of plants and flowers growing there. A Western pond turtle made a visit. And the birds, the rain gauge and the soil temperature measurements have carried on through it all.

Thirty-two feet across, the enclosed square at Quincy-Mayger Elementary School at Clatskanie, Ore., is surrounded by hallway windows on the other three sides. So the whole school gets passing glimpses of the current featured attraction.

As the rabbits came, the grass, flowers and a huge fern that used to grace the space went. The pair ate almost everything, including the food the students brought them.

In exchange for the clipped scenery, Daddy’s Boy and Rosie raised a family of seven bunnies under a room full of watchful eyes. Using mirrors on the ends of sticks, the children got a peek at the babies in their burrow, before Rosie was ready to bring them out. The children started hopping up from their desks for a closer look at the bunnies the first time “we saw these little white balls popping around,” said 9-year-old Angela Martin. It’s one of the rewards for the shared tasks of caring for the rabbits.

Donner said that when onecame for a month-long stay, everyone pitched in to learn what a pond turtle needs to survive. They tried everything from a big swimming pool for still, murky water, to special lights for warmth to make it feel comfortable. In the end they decided that what it needed most was its freedom. So it is now living in a pond at a park.

It’s nearly time for the rabbits to go back to their owner. The new family was one of the highlights of the three years Donner’s classes have used the patio. But “it keeps evolving,” she said, “from a home for lost turtles, to nine rabbits. . . . “

Now the plants may make a spring comeback. That’s how it started six years ago, when a class planned and planted the first garden.