By engaging students (and families) in a participatory/citizen science project on school campus, or at home, with connections to the UC Davis Student Farm, classes can build a sense of community while attending to the Social and Emotional Learning needs as well as academic learning needs of students. For those of you who may not be as familiar with the term, citizen science is when scientific research is conducted by amateur scientists (like you and me and our students). The resulting data can then be used on campus, and submitted to further research within the scientific community. In this unit, we will focus on introducing a citizen science monitoring project, teaching students how to collect data from their own backyard or other nearby outdoor space.