This project is a follow-up to Rama Central's "Food Drive for Orphaned Wildlife," which received second prize and a $2,000. grant in the 2015 Our Canada Project Award competition. This is an earlier blog post that describes the wildlife food drive and award:
In consultation with local wildlife rehabilitators, we decided to invest our $2,000. award in materials to construct wooden sleeping boxes for orphaned squirrels, flying squirrels, chipmunks and opossums, being raised for release back into the wild. We had Orillia Home Hardware supply us with the pre-cut plywood, hardware and glue to construct 96 squirrel boxes and 5 opossum boxes. 
The Grade 7 and Grade 8 classes took the lead on this project. They helped organized the materials, learned how to construct boxes, and shared their knowledge and skill with students in Grades 3-6. 
Tools, hardware, gloves, and a "practice box" under construction: 
Grade 7 and 8 students learning how to make boxes, on gym workshop Day 1: 
Our class building boxes with the Grade 8's, on gym workshop Day 2: 
After they learned how to construct boxes from the Grade 8's, students in our Grade 5 class constructed some boxes on their own, back in the classroom: 
Students were invited to autograph the bottoms of boxes they had constructed: 
This photo depicts about 70 finished squirrel boxes, being stored temporarily in one of the change rooms attached to the gym:
Mrs. Black offered to deliver twelve sleeping boxes (the most the would fit in her car) to each of four local wildlife rehabilitation centres, over four weekends. The wildlife sanctuaries have been asked to send someone to the school to pick up the balance of their boxes. 
Box Shipment #1 went to Shades of Hope Wildlife Refuge, near Pefferlaw: 
Our boxes will be used to protect orphaned squirrels, flying squirrels, chipmunks and opossums from the elements, until they are old enough to be released back into the wild. This is one of our squirrel boxes, mounted in a "pre-release enclosure" at Shades of Hope Wildlife Sanctuary: 
Box Shipment #2 went to Woodlands Wildlife Sanctuary, near Minden: 
This little Flying Squirrel, who is overwintering at Woodlands, gave our boxes her seal of approval! 
Box Shipment #3 went to Procyon Wildlife, near Beeton:
Box Shipment #4 was delivered to Aspen Valley Wildlife Sanctuary, near Rosseau:
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This is a video of the Shelters project that our class made, for Learning for a Sustainable Future:
This is coverage of our Shelters project on CTV Barrie news:
http://barrie.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=819830&binId=1.1272429&playlistPageNum=1
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We want to thank Learning for a Sustainable Future and the RBC Foundation, for making this project possible. We also want to give a HUGE shout-out to Wayne and Tom (pictured), and Bill, at Orillia Home Hardware. They did an absolutely stellar job pulling all the materials together for us. That included pre-cutting, packing and delivering the wood for 96 squirrel boxes and 5 opossum boxes! 
The Orillia Home Hardware team also offered to host a display that Mrs. Black made in the store foyer, over the March Break:
Last but not least, we couldn't have assembled 96 squirrel boxes so quickly and painlessly without the assistance of our amazing Grade 7 and 8 teachers, Mr. Westcott and Mrs. Ross, and their students! Thank you all!!! 
(T-shirts courtesy of Shades of Hope Wildlife Refuge)
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Thank you for visiting our class BLOG. If you have any questions or comments, feel free e-mail me (Margaret Black): mblack@scdsb.on.ca or to add a comment to this page.