GRAY, Maine—Maine’s Department of Education recently notified Fiddlehead School of Arts and Science that their application for a 2024 Maine Outdoor Learning Initiative (MOLI) Grant had been approved.

Fiddlehead’s MOLI grant will help provide much-needed resources for expanding opportunities for outdoor learning during the school day, as well as resources for Fiddlehead’s outdoor after-school and summer programs. The grant’s focus is to promote hands-on learning, engage students in thoughtful, environmental learning projects, and to recover lost learning time from the pandemic.

Grant programs and activities for students in grades 6–8 include:

• Providing students with IEP’s and 504 plans with opportunities to attend spring after school classes in garden preparation and planting, as well as enrollment in a Summer Camp in gardening basics, harvesting, and food preparation.

• Designing and constructing an outdoor shelter/classroom, which will be used by students to conduct forest studies (observing and collecting data on the forest population and biodiversity) and climate change studies. This shelter/classroom will be built at Norumbega, an 80-acre facility located in New Gloucester.

Bringing education out of the classroom and into the natural environment is one of Fiddlehead’s core values. Fiddlehead’s nature-based playground, as well as nearby Libby Hill, Norumbega, and nature preserve sites are resources currently utilized by Fiddlehead students to explore and teach science and ecology concepts.

Fiddlehead’s grant request was for $62,105.