Geocaching provides an exciting way to engage students in real-world STEM lessons. This program will provide a hands-on, inquiry based activity, aligned to the standards, which is conducted outside in nature. Students will be given a mystery to solve. They will work in teams using GPS devices to find “caches” which contain fun hands-on science activities. These activities must be completed to receive the clue which will help them solve the ultimate mystery. This lesson immerses students into literacy, mapping skills, mathematics, science and loads of fun!

Your class will become scientists! They will use scientific equipment and make scientific observations while they investigate and measure both living and non-living components within TWO different ecosystems: the pond and the forest. Using both observation and precise measurements, students will collect, record, analyze and compare and contrast the data.

These amazing plants eat bugs! You will be fascinated by our local species of carnivorous plants, including bladderworts, pink sundew, thread-leaf sundew as well as the endangered pitcher plants, including the white-topped pitcher plant, the purple pitcher plant, and the parrot pitcher plant. We will take a journey to visit these interesting plants in the bog. This field program introduces students to wetlands (bogs, marshes, swamps), teaches them about the adaptations that living things make according to the environment in which they live, and discusses plant parts and functions.

While participating in the Pollution Solutions program, students will tour the aquatic exhibits in the beach classroom, observing the organisms living in the different aquatic habitats.  They will learn about how human activity impacts aquatic environments.  This lesson will culminate with a marine debris timeline relay race! They will also learn who eats whom and what eats what in an aquatic ecosystem.  Students will use microscopes to explore how energy flows from the sun through an aquatic habitat.  They will discover the ingredients that make up an aquatic food chain, understanding how producers, consumers, and decomposers interact.  This program will give students a greater understanding of the impact in which humans have on the environment as well as the flow of energy through an ecosystem.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1, BLAST OFF! Students will enter the inflatable planetarium and see the night sky like they have never seen it before. Once inside, they will take off into space, studying the solar system, the sun, the planets in our solar system, the moon and its phases, constellations, and so much more!  Here on Earth, students will use a microscope and their imagination to compare the extremely large blue whale to the extremely tiny plankton that the blue whale eats all while learning about the flow of energy in an ecosystem.