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The Piedmont Soil and Water Conservation District offered outdoor classroom mini-grants to schools in Amelia, Nottoway and Prince Edward counties. Ann Thompson-Bell, a fourth grade teacher at Prince Edward County Elementary School was awarded a grant to bring the educational pond ecosystem back to life.

“The students were visually excited with taking ownership of this project; their accountability was commendable,” Bell said “They were thoroughly engaged in the process of setting up the outdoor classroom, the first ever for some of them, and loved the fact that they could have fun and get their hands dirty while doing so. Now that it is completed the students are busy exploring the living, biotic, parts as well as the nonliving, abiotic, parts.”