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Kindergarten Program Options 

● Monarch Butterflies (Aug./Sept./early Oct.) – Students learn how to properly use a hand lens by observing monarch caterpillars to make discoveries about colors, shapes, and patterns. (Inside)

● Examining Seasonal Changes on a Shape Walk (any season) -- Students understand how changes in the sun’s energy affect the behavior of living things in the environment. Students match different 2-D and 3-D shapes to objects observed on a walk around the school grounds. (Outside)

● Sorting, Counting, and Comparing Seeds (any season) -- Seeds are used to practice sorting by size, shape and color, counting, and to apply the concepts of “biggest” and “smallest,” “most” and “least,” and “same” and “similar.” Students practice using fine motor skills. (Inside)

● Critter Hunt (spring) -- Students observe temperature changes and discover invertebrates found on the nature trail to understand animal behavior as winter changes to spring. (Outside)

● The Sensational Sun (spring) – Students make predictions about the temperature in the sun vs. in the shade, and use shapes to create patterns on special sun-sensitive paper. We finish up by planting sunflower seeds in the school gardens. (Outside)

First Grade Program Options 

● Monarch Butterflies (Aug./Sept./early Oct.) -- Students learn about the life cycle of monarch butterflies and how they get their energy from different sources as they go through metamorphosis. (Inside)

● Spider Web Hunt (Sept./Oct.) -- Students understand the characteristics of spiders that help them to live, and practice math skills for organizing data while searching for different kinds of spider webs. (Outside)

● Trapping Energy (spring) -- Students plant warm season seeds in the cool temperatures of early spring to observe how the principles of cold frames aid plant growth. (Inside)

● Building Terrariums and Collecting Terrarium Animals (spring) -- Students learn how animals depend on living and non-living things to survive in their environment by building a terrarium to keep in their classroom. (Inside or outside)

● Vertical Gardening (spring) -- Students sow, tend, and observe the growth of different plants in special hanging pots along a chain link fence outside. (Inside or outside)

Second Grade Program Options 

● Monarch Butterflies (Aug./Sept./early Oct.) – Students learn about butterflies’ important role as pollinators and how people can help the monarch butterfly population recover. (Inside)

● Extreme Weather (any season) – Students help perform several experiments to learn about extreme weather like tornadoes, thunderstorms, and blizzards, and hurricanes. (Inside or outside)

● Measuring Weather (any season) – Students visit stations around the outdoor classroom to practice reading weather-measuring tools such as thermometers, weather vanes, anemometers, hygrometers, rain gauges, etc. and record their results. (Outside) 

● Weather -- Building Anemometers (any season) -- Students learn about different weather-measuring instruments and build anemometers to demonstrate how to calculate wind velocity. (Inside)

● Plotting Worm Length (any season) – Students study live worms using hand lenses, draw a scientific diagram of what they observe, and plot the length of several worms on a line plot. (Inside or outside)

● Living and Non-Living Interactions (spring) -- Students study the school compost pile to understand that living things affect non-living things and that non-living things affect living things. (Outside)

Third Grade Program Options  

● Monarch Butterflies (Aug/Sept/early Oct.) – Students learn about the unique body structures and behaviors of the monarch butterfly which help them locate food and shelter while avoiding predators. (Inside)

● Animals in Garden and Ground Habitats (early fall) -- Students understand that animals have traits that are learned and inherited and which help them survive in their environment. Observations from the garden habitat are compared with those from the ground habitat so students understand unique traits required in each. (Outside) 

● Soil Jars (any season) – Students study different types of soils and how they are made up of a mixture of inorganic and organic materials, and then we sketch scientific diagrams of different samples based on our observations. We then perform an experiment to see how different samples of water react when we pour water through them. (Inside) 

● Planting a Salad (early spring) -- Students welcome spring by planting cool season seeds in organic, raised garden beds to learn that seed germination is dependent on conditions in the seed’s habitat. (Outside)

● Harvesting a Salad (late spring) -- Students learn how to identify foods that are ready to harvest and the best harvest method. Students work together to harvest and clean the produce and finish up by sampling foods they planted two months earlier. (Outside) 

Fourth Grade Program Options 

● Monarch Butterflies (Aug/Sept/early Oct.) – Students learn about the effects that human changes have on the environment by investigating how modifications to our world have impacted the monarch butterfly population. (Inside)

● Weathering, Erosion, and Deposition (any season) – Students learn to identify areas where these earth processes have occurred around the school grounds. (Outside)

● Natural Resources Then and Now (any season) -- Students explore how human use of natural resources in our area has evolved over time. They discover the impact of our use on Earth’s resources by making observations around the trail and surrounding school yard. (Inside or outside) 

● Tree Identification Using a Dichotomous Key (any season) -- Students use a dichotomous key to identify trees and to understand the basics of how plants are classified. (Inside)

● Fossils (any season) -- Students explore fossils from the Cincinnati area and compare them to those from all around the world and make their own mold-and-cast “fossil” to take home. (Inside)