A Boy Scout’s community project to earn his Eagle Scout rank has helped give the Mountain Home Kindergarten an outdoor classroom.Mountain Home High School junior Duncan Conly teamed up with the Mountain Home School District and the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission to create the classroom, which had its very own ribbon-cutting event Friday morning attended by kindergartners, AGFC officials, and district representatives.Kindergarten principal Janet Wood talks about the area that has now been converted into the outdoor classroom.
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The kindergarten’s new outdoor classroom features a low stage and seating for 14 on tree logs in front of that stage. The area also includes five kindergarten-sized deck-style chairs and two adult-sized park-style benches. Three picnic-style tables, two sized for adults and one meant for kindergartners, is also part of the classroom.
The 17-year-old Conly built the classroom’s furniture for his Eagle Scout project. Eagle Scout is the highest rank attainable in the Boy Scouts of America, and requires the Scout to organize, lead and complete a service project that benefits the community.
Conly talks about building the chairs and tables for the classroom.
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He says the idea for using tree stumps as seats came from work he was doing at home.
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Conly says it took him, his family and his Scout troop about four months to build everything.
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The AGFC supported the project with a $3,000 grant, which the school district used to purchase the materials Conly used to build the outdoor classroom’s furniture. The grant also helped provide the classroom’s synthetic turf floor and the plants for the classroom’s flower bed, which holds boxwoods and perennials.
Future plans for the area include paving stones leading from the kindergarten’s library out to the classroom.
Wood says the outdoor classroom and stage has already gotten some use.
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Duncan Conly is the son of Troy and Kellye Conly. Kellye Conly is one of Mountain Home’s kindergarten teachers, and brought her class out to the classroom for Friday’s ribbon-cutting ceremony.
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