Outdoor Education

Student-focused and hands-on, our Outdoor Education Days are full of small and large group learning opportunities. Stations make include make-n-take, demonstrations, and experiments. During Outdoor Education Days, we often have station rotations of 10-25 minutes (depending upon the age of the students) where small groups learn about a topic and often make-n-take, then move to the next station and repeat until all students have experienced all stations.  Our stations are manned by BlueSTEM staff members, student interns, students, and BALC volunteers. 

Some of the educational stations we can offer:

  •   An Interactive Insight in the Life of Bees
    •  Life cycle, honey production, queens, drones, workers, swarms, hives, hive boxes
  • Aquaponics
    • Gardening without soil, raising fish and plants with water system
  • Bees
    •  Raising honeybees, harvesting honey, types of bee hives
  • Butter Making
    • History, making butter, tasting
  • Composting Systems
    • Purpose, types, Red Wigglers (worms), containers, uses
  • Dendrochronology
    •  Tree rings, paleoclimates (take home a tree cookie – not for eating)
  • Dino Dig (for elementary only)
    • Fossils, archeology, dinosaurs
  • Dutch Oven cooking
    • Using a Dutch oven to make meals, tasting
  • Fingerprinting 
    • Types of prints, methods of printing, uses, safety
  • Food Cycle Relay Race (for elementary only)
    • Food chain, circle of life, importance
  • Forensic Science
    •  DNA retrieval, handwriting analysis, shoe impressions, careers
  • Fort Reno in a Box
    •  History of Fort Reno through the years with games, fiction/nonfiction books, maps, more
  • Garden Safaris
    •  Safely capturing insects, identification, habitat, leave identification
  • Hydroponics
    • Gardening without soil, growing fodder for animals
  • Journal making 
    •  Using natural materials to make a journal, writing, collecting artifacts (take one home)

 

  • Making Bird Feeders
    • Pinecones, bird seed, lard, peanut butter (we are careful with allergies) (take one home)
  • Oobleck
    • Non-Newtonian fluid, solids, liquids
  • Parade Ground Games 
    •  Various historic and modern outdoor games including Giant Jenga, gunny sack races
  • Pollinator Garden Activities
    • Butterflies, plants, tagging butterflies
  • Quail (birds)
    •  How to incubate quail eggs, raise quail, release into the wild
  • Relative Humidly
    • How much water is in the air compared to the temperature of the water
  • Seed Bombs
    • Fast drying modeling clay, flower/plant sees (take one home)
  • Skins & Skulls
    •  Animals, food chain, osteology
  • Sun Printing
    • Cyanotype, plants, sun (take one home)
  • Take-Home Plants
    • Planting, care species of plants, biodegradable resources
  • Vermiculture
    • Raising Red Wiggler worms in composted materials
  • Water Cycle
    • Erosion, water movement, groundwater model, rainfall simulator
  • Water Sampling and Testing (for high school only)
    •  Taking samples to determine mineral content, insect populations, pH levels
  • Weighted Boat Engineering Activities
    •   Water, wading pool, pennies, aluminum foil, creative problem solving, critical thinking
  • And, other topics based on your specific needs