Seasonal Nature Exploration with Curriculum Focus
Health & Physical Education: Grade 1-12: Active Living, Movement and Competence
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| It’s refreshing to look for and enjoy the revolving cast of wildlife wonders and activities on the horizon with each new season. The interpretive hike can be tailored to a particular learning goal, a cluster of curriculum expectations, or it can be an open inquiry, allowing engaging learning opportunities (a barred owl, a red squirrel cache, a nurse log) to organically emerge from the forest to engage students.
Students will have more to enjoy every winter after an introduction to snowshoeing. They will learn how traditional snowshoes were engineered to suit various geographic areas. Leaving nothing but snowshoe tracks as they explore a trail, students will notice other tracks in the snow and recognize what animals had been travelling on the winter wonderland.
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Mapping It Out & Basic Orienteering Skills
Social Studies, History, and Geography: Map and Globe Skills: Grades 1-12
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From a bird’s eye view to our view, students will gain an understanding of maps and navigation. Where have I been? Where am I? Where do I want to go? How can I get there? Students will ask these fundamental questions, make maps, discuss their choices, read maps and, depending on grade level, orient maps, use compasses, various units of measurement, relative directions, cardinal directions, contour lines, grids, proportional representations, and symbols, testing their skills by completing an orienteering course and walking bearings in the “three-legged walk” game.
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Nature Connections & Nature Art Program
The Arts: Grades 1-3: C1, C2, D1, D2
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| Why do songbirds sing, grouse drum, and wolves howl? How do crickets “sing” (stridulate)? This activity will attune students to the great symphony of nature with its rests, beats, dawn choruses, “noisy leaf” aspens, banjo plucking Green Frogs, and babbling brooks. Students will also focus on elements and principles of visual art in nature, creating and sharing music and visual artworks using the musical properties and visual art possibilities of found materials. |
Protecting Biodiversity
Strongest Curriculum Connections: Science & Technology: Grade 6: Understanding Life Systems: Biodiversity
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| Wow! The grandeur of all things great and small, beautiful and bizarre, dark and dazzling, sweet and stinky, soft and spiky. Why should students care if there is one fewer species tomorrow? Students will learn about biodiversity, especially all the biodiversity close to home, and see the interconnectedness of the ecosystem as well as the effects of habitat loss and invasive species by playing Biodiversity Jenga and the “Garlic Mustard Invasion” game. |
Exploring Habitats
Strongest Curriculum Connections: Science & Technology: Grade 3: Growth and Changes in Plants; Grade 4: Habitats and Communities; Grade 6: Biodiversity
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| Exploring forest, field and/or aquatic habitats, students will discuss what local plants and animals need to thrive and learn about the effects of some invasive species. Students will play a part in the habitat balancing act through a role-playing game and discuss how we can help protect, create and enhance habitat for wildlife in our communities and contribute to healthy, diverse and resilient ecosystems. A native tree, shrub, and/or wildflower planting opportunity may be available (site specific). |
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Adaptations For Survival
Strongest Curriculum Connections: Science & Technology: Grade 1: Understanding Earth and Space Systems; Grade 2: Growth and Changes in Animals; Grade 3: Growth and Changes in Plants; Grade 4: Habitats and Communities
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| Students explore how plants and animals are adapted to survive, with a focus on our local plants and animals. An adaptation art-based activity will present students with a fictional environment and students will design a creature specially adapted to thrive. Playing fun role-playing games, students will act out adaptations as “Bat and Moth,” and “Red Fox and Snowshoe Hare.” |
Hike Safe Program & Shelter Building
Suitable for all ages and an excellent program option for community youth groups
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Students learn how to prepare safely for an outing in the outdoors. Basic Hug-a-Tree principals are covered, including steps to take to avoid getting lost in the woods and what to do if they do find themselves lost, simple steps to stay dry and warm while alerting search parties to your location. Students will participate in shelter building, and fire building can be requested.
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Discover the BUGS!
Strongest Curriculum Connections: Science & Technology: Grade 2: Growth and Changes in Animals; Grade 6: Biodiversity; Grade 8: Water Quality
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This catch and release program teaches about insects and their life cycles. Students use provided nets and containers to catch, study and release aquatic insects. Aquatic insects also act as bio-indicators of water health. Grades 5 and up will identify and rate water quality based on diversity and quantity of bug species found. This program can be brought into the schoolground and classroom: your program facilitator will bring in preserved aquatic bugs and/or pails with live critters for study.
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Wetland Wonders: Hike & Netting Program
Strongest Curriculum Connections: Science & Technology: Grade 4: Habitats and Communities; Grade 6: Biodiversity
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| Students learn all about wetlands, why they are so valuable for water protection, flood mitigation and ecosystem health and how wetlands form over time. Explore a local wetland while discussing the history of wetlands destruction and what we are doing to bring them back. Observe a diversity of wildlife, including species at risk, that are thriving in these spaces from aquatic critters to reptiles, amphibians, mammals, and birds. |
Water Stewardship and Sustainability Program
This workshop is most suited to grades 7 to 12 and can travel to a local park or conservation area. It has a half-day or full-day program option.
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| Students will learn about their local watershed and how their actions impact it. They will take part in basic water quality and benthic sampling to learn about how the health of a local water body is monitored. Students will explore current local water concerns and brainstorm and share water protection solutions for their local watershed. In the full-day program, students will discuss water access issues and hardships, and water conservation. Through team-building activities, they will better understand the earth's water system and their own role in caring for this resource.
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Soils and Erosion
Strongest Curriculum Connections: Science & Technology: Grade 3: Understanding Earth and Space Systems: Soils in the Environment
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Students get their hands dirty exploring the content, sediment sizes, and horizons of soil, and learning how contamination, compaction, and erosion can quickly ruin soils that have taken thousands of years to form. Creating model watersheds, students will use riparian vegetation and wetlands to become “Erosion Busters.”
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Instincts for Survival- Food Chains, Predator-Prey Relationships, Energy Flow
Strongest Curriculum Connections: Science & Technology: Grade 2: Growth and Changes in Animals; Grade 4: Habitats and Communities; Grade 6: Biodiversity; Grade 7: Interactions in the Environment
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A perennial favourite at the HR Frink CA, the exciting Instincts for Survival game puts students in the paws of herbivores, omnivores, and carnivores as they try to meet all their basic needs while avoiding natural disasters and human caused habitat destruction. The game has many versions and modifications, and students under eight years of age can play a hide-and-seek “Thicket Game.” Students will gain an appreciation for why cottontail rabbits are always on the lookout for predators and how difficult it is for all animals to survive in the wild, and they will follow up the game with a discussion on food chains, adaptations, energy flow, predator-prey relationships, and stewardship.
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Group Dynamics
Health and Physical Education: Grades 4-12: Active Living, Movement Competence
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Offered at the HR FRINK CA location - Students break the ice, warm up, and build trust by leaning back all together and holding onto a circle of webbing in order to physically hold one another up, exploring their comfort zones and learning edges. Students will then need to band together and marshal all their resources to rise to a set of challenging obstacles, which can be set up around a meaningful theme for the group.
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Human Impacts on Ecosystems
Strongest Curriculum Connections: Grade 4: Habitats and Communities; Grade 6: Biodiversity; Grade 7: Interactions in the Environment
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Students explore how humans impact ecosystems through investigations of forests (past to today), our water, and wetlands. Students will discuss positive actions to protect local ecosystems and look at the past and current health of their local watershed. Students will develop an action plan for protecting land and water for healthy, diverse and resilient ecosystems.
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Sustainable Healthy Forests
Strongest Curriculum Connections: Grade 4: Habitats and Communities; Grade 6: Biodiversity; Grade 7: Interactions in the Environment
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Students explore the various layers of a healthy forest, from the forest floor to the canopy and discuss how each layer supports a variety of wildlife and contributes back to a healthy forest and biodiverse ecosystem. Student will be introduced to various species of trees and shrubs, and students will discuss the many economic, environmental, and social benefits trees provide. Students will finish with a short sit-spot activity to experience the soothing and calming benefits of slowing down and tuning into their senses in nature.
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