DISCOVER LOWER SCHOOL MIDDLE SCHOOL ADMISSIONS SUMMER 5-4-17bds02605.jpg Lower School Overview Welcome from Lower School Head Academics Physical Education Arts Beyond the Classroom Greening and Sustainability Greening and Sustainability Environmental Mission Statement Belmont Day School is committed to educating and encouraging all members of our school community to be responsible, respectful, and caring stewards of the environment. We will strive to teach and implement environmental best practices that will create a sustainable school environment and to develop life-long skills that will prepare our members to make responsible environmental choices to sustain our local and global communities. Belmont Day Garden: See How They Grow The community garden at Belmont Day serves as an excellent teacher. It helps demonstrate lessons about the cycles of agriculture. Beyond that, students learn firsthand that the most gratifying achievements require planning, knowledge, commitment, effort, and patience. We grow organic vegetables, edible flowers, and herbs. Students contribute to the effort, along with staff and parent volunteers. Our produce is not only used in our lunches but is donated to a food pantry and used in meals prepared for shelters. We use the garden across virtually all subjects and connect with academic curricula in many grade levels. A large pollinator garden, located directly alongside the vegetable garden, is filled with flowering plants and fruit trees to attract native pollinators such as bumblebees and other insects, butterflies, bats, and birds. Two Warre beehives feature observation windows and a design that allows bees to draw out their own honeycomb. Students help to maintain the hives and harvest the honey. The gardens and beehives serve as a lovely metaphor for our school, demonstrating that together, with attentiveness and industry, caring and collaboration, we can achieve impressive results. Solar Power An 80 kW solar array is situated on the roof of the Barn and feeds directly into the building. It is expected that the array will provide up to 15% of the Barn's electrical needs. The array is an exciting addition to our curriculum work in sustainability. Students will explore the design, electronics, and engineering of solar panels track the energy savings provided by solar power, and learn about other ways to reduce our carbon footprint. Check out our Solar Kiosk (link is external) for a live glimpse at the daily energy production and the collateral environmental savings and benefits produced by this installation. Community Initiatives Classroom and lunchroom composting Student energy conservation patrol School-wide recycling Eliminating use of bottled water Vehicle idling awareness campaign Farm to school program Environmental community service opportunities for families Home An elementary & middle school | pre-k to grade 8 55 Day School Lane, Belmont, MA 02478 617-484-3078 Facebook LinkedIn Instagram Vimeo Twitter CONTACT Directions Careers Teacher Training Calendar School Store Scoop Sitemap Legal Notices ©2021 Belmont Day School. All rights reserved. Site created by Pop Kitchen , Common Media , Good Design LLC Open Slidebox