Nicole Champoux

Champoux's innovative project, "Living Roof," will expand the experience of students at Montessori Children's House at all education levels. The students will be able to conduct indoor and outdoor experiments. The project will start by having the children study the campus' water cycle to gather data on rainfall; water quality; garden, curriculum, kitchen and building usage; costs and available solar energy. Then they will explore the sizes, shapes, functions, and attachment patterns of leaves and branches on local native plants. With the help of the parent community and an architect, they will build and install a structure that will help with simple resource collection, monitoring, and reuse. Younger children will talk about what they've learned and will bring first-hand results of their class projects home to their families. Older children will be able to write stories about their projects and give oral reports. Ultimately, the goal is to encourage thoughtful usage of new resources. Champoux lives in Seattle.