Creating a schoolyard with a diverse landscape offers much more to students and the community than the typical barren schoolyard.  Such benefits include:

Teaching and Learning Opportunities
A diverse landscape offers many learning opportunities in science, language arts, math, history, geography, social studies, and art.  The process of planning, implementing, and using a habitat project provides children with a unique hands-on learning experience.

Informal Learning
Experts know that play is an important part of learning.  A diverse schoolyard setting offers many informal learning opportunities when children are outside for recess or after school.

Hidden Messages
The landscape carries a hidden message as students develop a perception of what normal landscape looks like.  Schoolyards are typically open and barren with a few scattered landscape plants.  It is not a coincidence that most of our yards at home are barren with a few ornamental plants.  Conversely, children that attend schools with natural landscape features will have a much different perception of a typical landscape , one that coincides with conservation of natural environments.

Improved Habitat
School habitat projects provide habitat for local and migratory wildlife and, in many cases, provide a vegetative buffer to nearby streams.

Click onto http://www.fws.gov/chesapeakebay/schoolyd.htm for schoolyard habitat project ideas.