Endless Mountains Nature Center - Outdoor Field Studies
Environmental Education for Schools & Groups
Experience and learn outdoors!
Nature runs all year and so do we!
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Traditional Option: click here
Environmental Education Specialist teach field studies programs. |
Economical Option: click here
Classroom Teachers AND Environmental Education Specialist teach field studies programs. Lessons and materials provided by EMNC.
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Traditional Option for Field Studies
Each hands-on, experiential field study program is multi-disciplinary in nature and meets many of the Pennsylvania academic standards. A correlation to the standards can be created for your program, if desired. All programs can be tailored to a classroom study unit, if the goals and vocabulary are provided in advance. Minimum grade level on programs listed below is kindergarten.
Ecosystem Exploration: River, Forest, Wetland or Field
Third grade+. All year.
Chose an ecosystem or two to explore. Students identify biotic and abiotic factors in an ecosystem and discover how they are interacting. Students also learn the difference between an ecosystem and a habitat.
Keep On Moving—Seed Dispersal
All ages. Fall only.
Why do plants have seeds? How do seeds travel? Who eats them? Who lives in them? By examining seeds of many different sizes and shapes students will discover the answers to these questions and more.
Seasonal Study: Fall, Winter, Spring, or Summer
Kindergarten-Second grade
What’s happening to the plants and animals in the fall? What else changes? Students’ use their camera eyes, make sound maps, and draw and label a seasonal scene. This is the first of a three part study of the seasons. Students visit the same site in the fall, winter, and spring to see how the habitat changes through the course of a year.
They’re ALL plants!?!
All ages. Fall, spring, or summer.
Students explore the world of plants by comparing mosses, trees, and wildflowers. Plant parts and photosynthesis are explored through hands-on comparisons during a plant scavenger hunt and by role playing the parts and functions of a tree.
It’s A SPORE World
Third grade+. Fall, spring, or summer. Fungi are best in fall.
Students learn why algae, lichen, moss, and fungus are important as they explore the differences between flowering plants and non-flowering organisms. Your class will explore how these non-flowering, plant-like organisms reproduce, discover their roles in succession and decomposition and investigate examples of symbiotic relationships.
The Web of Life
Third grade+. All year.
Students play a food chain game, go on a food chain scavenger hunt, and meet a live consumer that sits at the top of the food chain. (A hawk). Older students learn how DDT and Rachel Carson affected the health of the web of life.
Insect Safari
All ages. Fall, spring, or summer.
Students examine live insects (and other invertebrates) in an introduction to the spineless. They will be taught where to find insects outside and how to identify them. By observing life stages and adaptations, students will learn to identify different insects in aquatic and terrestrial habitats. After heavy frost aquatic habitat only.
Habitat, Habitat—Have to Have a Habitat
Third grade+. All year.
Students discover what animals (including people) and plants need to survive, and what makes a habitat a “home”. Venturing into the forest, your class will investigate wildlife homes and diets, and learn to identify signs of various species and how an assortment of factors control wildlife populations.
Traditional Option Fee: $6 per student for two programs; tour of garden and aviary, and visitors center at Camp Lackawanna. If held at Kiwanis Nature Park the tour is omitted. Time is set aside for lunch.
Maximum group size is currently one classroom or 25 students. This may be expanded to 50 in the near future.
Scheduling & Questions: Contact EMNC at 570-836-3835 or at the email address below.
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Economical Option for Field Studies
By utilizing classroom teachers’ knowledge and skills to lead students through self-guided stations and scavenger hunts on the trails, only one professional environmental educator is needed per group. This reduces the cost from $6 per student to $3 per student for a full-day field study program. It also expands EMNC’s capacity from 25 or 50 students to approximately 100 students.
The EMNC environmental educatation specialist will have materials and easy instructions ready for the classroom teachers and students to use when they arrive. Then after a brief introduction the students will be divided into two or four groups, depending on the total number of students. EMNC’s environmental educator will then spend one session with each group while the classroom teachers work through the station and scavenger hunt with their own students. The students will have an introduction, lunch, and wrap-up session together. See the sample schedule.
Select ONE self-led trail program (1.5 hrs.)
Each student is supplied with a clipboard and scavenger hunt sheet. Classroom teachers lead their classes on a scavenger hunt on one of the trails. Notes on commonly objects and/or organisms are included.
- Habitat Hunt
- Animal Homes & Signs
- Tree Scavenger Hunt
- Movin’ On (seed dispersal)
- Seasonal Study
- Creepy Crawly Critters
- Fungus Among Us (decomposers)
- Plant Scavenger Hunt
- Weather & Erosion Scavenger Hunt
Select ONE Self-led Station Activity (45 mins.)
Teachers are supplied with materials and instructions to lead your class through one of the following activities:
- River Insects: Using buckets, nets, and ID charts students catch benthic macroinvertebrate (bottom-dwelling insects) at the edge of the shallow-side of the Susquehanna River.
- Populations & Habitats: Play “Oh, Deer,” a running game where students are deer and parts of their habitat. Deer populations react as the habitat changes during the game.
- Food Chains & Webs: Play a food chain game where students are grasshoppers, shrews, and hawks. Build a food web. Older students add pollution into the food chain.
- Fill the Bill: Students learn how birds’ beaks are adapted to best eat their food, through hands-on experimentation.
- Migration Headache: Students are the moving parts in a life-sized board game about bird migration. Students read cards and follow directions.
- Going Batty!: As you and your students Build-A-Bat you discuss how their body parts are adapted to the bats lifestyle. Dispel myths and learn some fun and basic bat facts with a game of “Some, All or None.”
- It’s a Spore World: Shrink your students to the size of an ant and give them magnifying lenses to explore a transect line. They’ll discover the world of moss, fungus, and lichens.
- Watersheds: Introduce your students to watersheds and using maps trace and record the watershed address of your school and EMNC.
- Your Own Program: Art, language arts, history, math, music or any topic you wish, but you may need to bring your own speciality supplies.
Select ONE Environmental Education Specialist Program (45 mins.)
 Raptors Rule!
Meet three LIVE raptors: a falcon, an owl, and a hawk during this fun and informative program. Adaptations, niches, food chains, habitats, and bird characteristics are covered.
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The EMNC environmental educator shares scientific information through discussion, hands-on exploration, and other activities on one of the following topics.
- River Ecology
- Forest Ecology
- Nutrient Cycles
- What Is A Bird?
- Botany Basics
- Animal Groups
- Topic Wrap-up & Mural
- Habitat Exploration
- Naturalist’s Choice
Fee: $3 per student includes tour of garden and aviary, and visitors center at Camp Lackawanna. Time is set aside for lunch.
Scheduling & Questions: Contact EMNC at 570-836-3835 or at the email address below.
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