Past Mini-Grant Recipients

2008 Mini Grant Recipients
Baldwin Intermediate, Quincy
The Green Team at Baldwin Intermediate is creating/enhancing natural areas within campus boundaries to serve as natural living laboratories. Grant money will be used to print and bind full color guidebooks for the living laboratories.

Hoo Haven Wildlife Rehab& Education Center, Durand
Funding will allow Hoo Haven to create one Wildlife Discovery Trunk specifically designed for children ages 4-7. Hoo Haven loans Wildlife Discovery trunks to classrooms prior to their Raptor Ambassador Program which brings unreleasable birds of prey to schools.

Irons Oaks Environmental Learning Center, Olympia Fields
Grant monies will be used to purchase bird feeders that will be placed in a vacant area outside of the Irons Oaks Discovery Center. The station will be help to educate program participants as well as the general public about the importance of bird conservation.

New Central Elementary School, Havana
Grant money will be used to take New Central Elementary School’s entire 3rd grade class on a field trip to the Emiquon Preserve and Dickson Mounds Museum. The field trip will be the culmination of several weeks of study about wetlands.

St. Charles Park District, St. Charles
The St. Charles Park District’s new geology field trip, The Lay of the Land: A Topographic Mapping and Orienteering Experience, is targeted toward sixth grade students. Grant money will be used to purchase equipment for the program.

St. Joseph Grade School, St. Joseph
As culmination of a year studying butterflies, the Kindergarten students at St. Joseph Grade will visit the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum/Judy Istock Butterfly Haven in Chicago. Funds will be used for bus transportation to the museum.

Willowbrook Wildlife Center, Glen Ellyn
The Willowbrook Wildlife Ambassadors program is new program being offered at Willowbrook Wildlife Center to prepare teens ages 14-18 to become educators or naturalists. Grant money will be used to purchase books that will help prepare Wildlife Ambassadors.

2007 Mini Grant Recipients
Lorado Taft Field Campus, Oregon
Funding will be used to purchase a telescope, laser pointer and other tools to enhance the astronomy class currently being offered to schools attending Taft’s residential environmental education programs.

Bloom High School, Chicago Heights
Paper, cell phones and ink cartridges are currently being recycled at Bloom High School. This grant will allow the Science Club to purchase plastic bottle recycling bins so that students and staff will also be able to recycle their plastic bottles.

Claremont Academy, Chicago
The 4th grade students take part in a number of hands-on lessons to help them learn about local ecosystems. The culmination of this unit is a field trip to the Little Red Schoolhouse. Grant funds will be used to support this field trip.

Montini Catholic High School, Lombard
Students at Montini Catholic High School study the romantic writers of the 1800’s with a focus on the environmental issues discussed in Thoreau’s and other writer’s essays stories, and poetry. The students then take a field trip to the Morton Arboretum where they study in the woods and at the pond. Grant funds will be used to support this field trip.

St. Mary Immaculate Parish School, Plainfield
The school’s fourth grade students will research and design a butterfly garden. Funds will be used to purchase research materials and field guides that will help the students to decide which plants to use in the butterfly garden. The remainder of the funds will then be used to purchase plants.

McCully Heritage Project, Kampsville
Funding will be used to purchase bird egg replicas for the Native Nesters: Illinois Bird Habitat and Conservation exhibit. Through the exhibit, visitors will learn about native bird habitats; the importance of preserving bird habitat; and the history of the U.S. Migratory Bird Act.

Arcola High School, Arcola
Grant money will be used to purchase subscriptions to environmental magazines so that students in the school’s Environmental Science class will have current information on environmental issues.

Glenn Elementary, Normal
The 4th and 5th grade students at Glenn Elementary are participating in GLOBE (Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment). The grant money will be used to purchase a GPS unit to aid students with their data collection for the project.

Champaign County Forest Preserves, Homer
Funds will be used to purchase new enclosures for the animals housed at the Environmental Education Center.

Touch of Nature Environmental Center, Makanda
Grant money will be used to purchase new dip nets and macro invertebrate identification flash cards for Touch of Nature’s Learning about Lakes/Pondering Ponds workshop.

2006 Mini Grant Recipients
Hoo Haven Wildlife Rehabilitation & Education Center, Durand
Funding will enable Hoo Haven to provide their Raptor Ambassador Program to a school in the Harlem School District. Hoo Haven’s “in-school field trip” brings birds to the classroom, providing a cost-effective alternative to reinforce science curriculum.

Girl Scouts-Prairie Winds, INC Brownie Troop #211, Villa Park
The Brownie Troop from Ardmore Elementary School received $50.00 to attend the ‘Living with Wildlife’ program at Willowbrook Wildlife Center. The troop intends to use this program as an educational tool to help plan, plant and maintain a wildlife garden in Villa Park.

North School, Villa Park
Money used to enhance the W.O.R.M. Project ( Worms to Organic Recycling Material) which allows North School’s recycling club to help students understand the importance of vermicomposting. The project uses leftovers from staff and students lunches which is vermicomposted and returned to the flowerbeds in the school’s courtyard.

Take Learning Outdoors, Rushville
Funding will be used to create birding trail stations on topics such as bird songs/calls, nesting behaviors, size and shape comparisons and beginning identifying techniques. The stations will teach beginning birding to children and adults.

Ridgeview Elementary School, Mclean
Funding will be used to purchase the book ‘Flute’s Journey, the Life of a Wood Thrush’. The books will be used with fifth graders to promote an understanding of migration and what we can do to preserve the habitats of migrating birds.

Girl Scouts- Green Meadows Council, Urbana
S.M.O.R.E.S (Science and Math Outside for Real Experience for Scouts) received funding to design a year round interactive learning experience to teach girls about microscopic organisms and how ecological balances effect a global environment.

North Elementary School, Marshall
Grant money will be used to purchase prairie seeds and gardening equipment. The third and fifth grade students will help to establish a prairie garden at North Elementary School.

Albers Elementary School, Albers
Students will attend the Land for Learning Institute and participate in a biodiversity study. The biodiversity study will allow students to explore biotic and abiotic factors in sourthern Illinois ecosystems.

2005 Mini Grant Recipients
Unity Point School, Carbondale
Mrs. Kerry Glenn - $182

Parrish School, Carbondale
Ms. Sara Sellers - $190.16

LaSalle County Historical Museum, Utica
Nancy Maze and Jen Guest - $200

New Central Elementary School, Havana
Cindy McGrew - $154.75

Oakbrook Terrace Park District, Oakbrook Terrace
Becky Lambert - $200

Carterville Intermediate Schoo, Carterville
Jan Campbell - $200

New Central Elementary School, Havana
Vicki Bonnet - $185.80