Our Garden Program
This our fourth year as participants in the Plant a Thousand Gardens/EGI Program and continue to receive grant funding to expand our school garden while educating students about where/how plants grow and important nutrition education.
Our EGI Classes have begun using Florida’s Farm to School Harvest of the Month (HOM), an educational program that highlights a different Florida-grown product each month of the school year. HOM cultivates a healthy food and farm connection by increasing students' exposure to seasonal foods while also supporting local farmers.
Congratulations to our Eagles S.T.E.a.M Team, winners of the Carton2Garden Spring 2017 competition!
Our S.T..E.M. project was inspired by Rube Goldberg machines, a marble raceway and the need to irrigate our seedling grown in recycled milk cartons.
Growing Beyond Earth (NASA VEG-01Garden) bonus activity gave the students a chance to plant 5 species that might be grown on the International Space station:dill, Koji (tatsoi), Chinese cabbage, red lettuce, and grey dwarf peas. Students observed and measured each to see which seeds sprouted first, produced the most, which went to seed first, which produced the most seed for replanting, which allowed continual harvesting and which had thee most nutritional value.
Tomatosphere UPDATE!
Our Tomatosphere seeds made it to the International Space Station!
Mission Overview: SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launched a Dragon spacecraft, carrying almost 6,000 pounds of supplies and payloads including Tomatosphere seeds, to low-Earth orbit on June 3, 2017. The Dragon spacecraft was the 100th to launch from the historic LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center and delivered critical materials to directly support dozens of the more than 250 science and research investigations that will occur during Expeditions 52 and 53. You can watch the launch here. ISS Capture: On June 4, International Space Station crew members successfully used the station’s 57.7-foot (17.6-meter) robotic arm to reach out and capture the Dragon spacecraft and attach it to the station. Return Flight: Dragon will return to Earth after approximately one month at the orbiting laboratory. About five hours after Dragon leaves the station, it will conduct its de-orbit burn, which lasts up to 10 minutes. It takes about 30 minutes for Dragon to reenter the Earth’s atmosphere, where it will splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja, California. For more information about the mission and payloads, visit www.nasa.gov/spacex. This launch is particularly exciting for Tomatosphere researchers because this is the first batch of seeds to include HOBO data loggers. Using the HOBOs allows better observation of the exact conditions the seeds are under while in space. They are now tracking the variables of temperature, humidity, and pressure through all stages of transportation. 
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This is also our 4th year participating in the Fairchild Challenge and we received a garden grant to purchase plants, weather gauges, soil meters and lab coats for our STEM Team. Click here to get updates on our Eagles Garden and Butterfly Sanctuary or to see more images. We had a lot of exciting things going on this year including the NASA VEG-01 Project bonus project, Carton2Garden, and Tomatosphere! These projects were out of this world!!!
Our 2016-2017 Fairchild Challenge Teachers at the Fairchild Kick off Brunch
2016-2017 Fairchild Challenge
This year Bel-Aire Elementary was the recipient of the Fairchild Challenge Award for the 4th consecutive year, and received the Bronze Award for earning a total of 1805 points! Congratulations! to our amazing 2017 Environmental Role Model...5th grader Jessica Pupo!!! Congratulations also to the following students for their outstanding work and for being chosen to represent our school!
Challenge 1A: Mapping South Florida's Jewels Aubri Jones /1st Grade Ronald Gonzalez / 1st Grade Challenge 1B: Mapping South Florida's Jewels Yaritza Garcia / 3rd Grade Tyler Hall / 3rd Grade Challenge 1C: Mapping South Florida's Jewels Amira Kashem/ 4th Grade Aryan Rahman / 5th Grade Challenge 2A: Where We Live "Eco-Banner Ms. Bouchard's 1st grade students Ms. Willis's 2nd grade students Challenge 2C: Where We Live "My Perfect Ecosystem" Jonathan Ramos/ 5th Grade Yunais Gil/ 5th Grade Challenge 3: Shade Our Schools Ms.Uceta's 5th Grade Science students, Ms. Cintron's 4th & 5th grade Art students, Ms. Rivera's 3rd grade students Challenge 4: School Garden Schoolwide Group entry grades K-5 2015-2016 Fairchild Challenge Congratulations to the following students for their outstanding work and for being chosen to represent our school! Challenge 1A: Design "Million Orchid Project" Emmanuel Moreno 1st grade Armani Jefferson 1st grade Challenge 1B: Design "Million Orchid Project" Jake De La Rosa 3rd grade John Smith 3rd grade Challenge 1C: Design "Million Orchid Project" Alejandra Reynaga 5th grade Ailin Lopez 5th grade Challenge 2A: Mask "Everglades Animals" Jade Acevedo - Purple Gallinule 1st grade Jada Hodge, Sabrina Iqbal- Egret Kinder Challenge 2B: Mask "Everglades Animals" Raymond Ramnath-Panther 3rd grade Randy FungKee Fung, Raphael Cardona-Flamingo 3rd grade Challenge 2C: Mask "Everglades Animals" Tiffany Valentine-Hind - Heron 4th grade Angel Gonzalez, Breilin Balnco, Eileen Miralez-Flamingo 4th grade Challenge 3A: Art "Florida Flora and Friends" Soniya Gilliam 1st grade Rebecca Golanzez 1st grade Challenge 3B: Art "Florida Flora and Friends" Alejandro Morera, 2nd grade Ivan Perez, 2nd grade Challenge 3C: Art "Florida Flora and Friends" Kevin Moncada, 5th grade Jessica Fung Kee Fung, 5th grade Challenge 5: School Garden PPT: 400 Points, First Place Challenge 6: Environmental Action Newsletter Eagles Green Pages: 400 Points, First Place Total Points Earned: 1601, Fairchild Challenge Award!!! Also Congratulations to Gissery Acosta for being selected as our Bel-Aire Elementary Student Environmental Role Model and to Ms. Willis as our teacher Role Model!! As in 2014 and 2015, we were honored to once again recieve the Fairchild Challenge Award. In 2015 and 2014 we earned 2nd place overall for the Garden Challenge. In 2015 we earned an award of Merit for our Envornmental Awareness Challange, as well as two awards in the Ecology Art Challenge! in 2014 we earned 2 more art awards.
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