Kindergarten Program Offerings

Bob and Otto

  • Learning Objective: Earthworms are alive, live in the soil, eat decaying  leaves and help plants grow.
  • Activity:  After reading a story or watching a short puppet show, students visit with live earthworms.

Dress Like a beaver

  • Learning Objective:  Students learn about busy beavers.
  • Activity:  Learn about a beaver’s habitat and adaptations by dressing a classmate like a beaver!

fishing Fun

  • Learning Objective:  Fish live in the stream and need clean, healthy water.  
  • Activity:  Listen to a story while observing how fish are affected by changes in stream water quality. Then have a chance to "fish" for types of fish found in Ohio.
Click below to see program standard alignment
1st GRADE PROGRAM OFFERINGS
HOW MANY BEARS CAN LIVE
IN THIS FOREST?
OHIO HABITATS
GOBBLE GOBBLE
HENRY THE GREAT BLUE HERON
  • Learning Objective: Living things have basic needs; humans and seasonal change can impact the availability of resources.
  • Activity:  Learn about bears by playing a game where students must "forage"  for their food! 
  • Learning Objective: Living things interact with their physical environment.
  • Activity:  Students will learn about Ohio’s ecosystems and will place animals in their rightful habitat​
  • Learning Objective:  Learn about Wild Turkeys;  what they eat, where they live, how they communicate and more.
  • Activity:  After students learn fun facts about Wild Turkeys, they mimic a turkey call.​
  • Learning Objective: Living things have certain characteristics and use body parts to seek resources.
  • Activity:  Students learn about beak adaptations in birds and use tools to mimic different beak styles to gather "food".
Click below to see program standard alignment
2nd GRADE PROGRAM OFFERINGS
WATER CYCLE GAME
FOSSILS
BEAVER BUILDERS
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  • Learning Objective: Water moves in a continuous cycle; students relate terms with properties of water and weather.
  • Activity: Students become a "droplet" of water and map their journey in the water cycle.​
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  • Learning Objective: Some kinds of individuals that once lived on Earth have completely disappeared, although they were something like others that are alive today.
  • Activity:  Observe fossils from rock layers and make a fossil imprint to take home.​
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  • Learning Objective:  Students learn about nature's best engineer, the American beaver.
  • Activity:  Learn about physical and behavioral adaptations of beavers, and how they change their environment.
WIGGLING WORMS
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  • Learning Objective: Earthworms cause changes to the soil which impacts other living things.
  • Activity:  Students make observations about live earthworms.
MIRANDA THE FISH
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  • Learning Objective:   Human activity can change environments and affect other living organisms.
  • Activity:  Journey with Miranda down the river and see how pollution can harm her home.
Click below to see program standard alignment
3rd GRADE PROGRAM OFFERINGS
GEOLOGY STATIONS
TOIL FOR OIL
ANIMAL & PLANT ADDRESSES
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  • Learning Objective: Rocks have unique characteristics.
  • Activity: Students are given rocks and must determine which type of rocks they have.
  • ​​Learning Objective: Explore Ohio’s renewable vs. nonrenewable resources and relate to conserving our limited resources that are used for energy.
  • Activity:  Students experience the increasing difficulty of extracting a limited, nonrenewable resource over several years and will consider and discuss renewable energy sources.
  • Learning Objective: Plants and animals have physical features that they associate with the environments in which they live.
  • Activity:  Students compete by guessing an animal based on life cycle and adaptations clues.
NO WATER OFF A DUCK'S BACK
MONARCH MARATHON
BUZZY, BUZZY BEE
SOIL PARTICLES
  • Learning Objective: Oil is a       non-renewable natural resource.  Oil spills can occur  with the transportation and drilling for this natural resource, and have negative environmental consequences.
  • Activity:  Students learn about how oil spills affect ecosystems and wildlife.  They investigate different techniques to clean up waterfowl affected by an oil spill.
  • Learning Objective: Learn about the life cycle and migration of the monarch butterfly
  • Activity: Learn the "Life Cycle Story Dance" and perform a simulation activity where students become different generations of monarchs and "migrate" to different zones.
  • Learning Objective: Learn about life cycles as well as physical and behavioral traits of organisms.
  • Activity:  Be reacquainted with a famous pollinator, why we need them, and play a bee game.
  • Learning Objective: Students learn that Earth’s non-living resources have specific properties.
  • Activity: Students investigate soil particles and learn about the composition of soil through a story and hands-on activities.​
Click below to see program standard alignment
4th GRADE PROGRAM OFFERINGS
STREAM ECOSYSTEM
EROSION/STREAM TABLE
EARTH FORMATIONS
TOPOGRAPHIC MAPS
  • Learning Objective: Insects found or not found in the stream are water quality indicators.
  • Activity: Students learn about how they impact water quality by finding insects in a simulated stream.
  • Learning Objective: Geologic processes affect change on the Earth’s surface.
  • Activity: A Riverlab  stream model is used to illustrate different erosion and deposition processes on a natural landscape.
  • May be loaned pending availability. 
  • Learning Objective: Environmental changes, like weathering or erosion, can be constructive, destructive or even neutral.
  • Activity: Students visit five stations and conduct erosion, weathering, physical and/or chemical change experiments.
  • Learning Objective: Learn about geologic history, including processes like glacial movement that changed the Earth’s surface.
  • Activity: Students analyze a topographic map of their school’s location and conduct an activity with contour lines.
FOSSILS
HERE TODAY, GONE TOMORROW
FISHING FOR THE FUTURE
TURDLE HURDLES
  • Learning Objective:  Fossils provide a point of comparison between the types of organisms that lived long ago and those that exist today.
  • Activity: Observe fossils from rock layers and compare structures on different fossils through a "mystery" game based on scientific observation!
  • Learning Objective: Learn about the life of Ohio animals that have disappeared, are endangered or threatened.
  • Activity: Students will learn about animals that are in trouble and get to touch some animal skins. 
  • Learning Objective: Students learn that humans can cause rapid change to ecosystems through over fishing.
  • Activity:  Students will do an activity that shows them the consequence of over fishing.  
  • Learning Objective: Ecosystems can change gradually or dramatically as with adaptations of sea turtles.
  • Activity:  Students will learn about sea turtles then play a game to see that there are many things that can affect the sea turtle's survival. 
  • Large space needed such as a gymnasium or outdoor field.
Click below to see program standard alignment
5th GRADE PROGRAM OFFERINGS
DECOMPOSERS
ENERGY PIPELINE
SHOP 'TIL YOU DROP!
LINKS IN A CHAIN
  • Learning Objective: Students learn about the decomposer food chain.
  • Activity:  Students discover nature’s sanitation crews and why they are important. Students will also get to take a look at some composting worms that are hard at work.
  • Learning Objective: Energy flows through the ecosystem in one direction from plants to decomposers.
  • Activity: Students play a game that demonstrates the interactions of organisms resulting in the flow of energy throughout ecosystems.
  • Learning Objective: Choices people make have both present and future consequences.
  • Activity:  Students experience how resources are distributed and used by different people based on access to wealth. Then, they will discuss solutions to address the environmental impacts and to help alleviate poverty. 
  • Learning Objective: Discover that a stream ecosystem is diverse and supports many different species. Stream life is linked together in a food chain.
  • Activity:  Teams of students compete in a relay race to build a stream food chain with links of different species. 
Click below to see program standard alignment