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School Programs: Science/Interdisciplinary

Great Swamp | Pyramid Mountain | Frelinghuysen Arboretum

Great Swamp Outdoor Education Center

Amazing Adaptations

• Grades: 3-6
• Duration: 2 hours
• Offered: Fall and Spring

How do animals avoid predators on the prowl, attract the best mates, or survive the winter cold? Visit a variety of habitats and take part in hands-on activities to learn about the amazing physical and behavioral adaptations that help wildlife survive.

New! Apple Cidering

• Grades: K-8
• Duration: 2 hours
• Offered: Fall Only

Students learn the amazing apple's place in history and in the natural world as they prepare the apples, grind them, turn the old-fashioned press, and collect the cider. After tasting the homemade cider, they compare and contrast other fruits and seeds along the trails.

Backbone Bonanza

• Grades: 3-8
• Duration: 2 hours
• Offered: Fall and Spring

Who has backbone and who is spineless in the animal kingdom? Find out about vertebrates and invertebrates as students handle a multitude of touchable nature objects, view specimens, and take a hike to categorize all the animal life found.

Blazing the Way

• Grades: 3-8
• Duration: 2 hours
• Offered: Year-round

Could you have survived life in New Jersey in the 1700s? Use of the natural environment was essential to the pioneers. Students will love learning about the plants they used, making wooden shingles with real pioneer tools, and dyeing wool with native berries, nuts, and flowers, among other activities.

Cool Creepy Crawlies

• Grades: 3-6
• Duration: 2 hours
• Offered: 5/15 - 10/15

Students study live insects and some of their relatives by examining body characteristics, habits, and adaptations through indoor and outdoor activities.

Fantastic Forest

• Grades: 1-4
• Duration: 2 hours
• Offered: Year-round

Discover the wonders of the forest habitat and its inhabitants through hands-on activities and exploration. Students focus on trees as they learn about plant life cycles, as well as the jobs of roots, leaves, bark, branches, and more.

Get Lost

• Grades: 3-12
• Duration: 2 hours
• Offered: Fall and Spring

Classes discover the basics of orienteering, combining science, math, and history as they learn about early navigational tools and basic map and compass use. Following a series of hands-on activities, the lesson culminates with an orienteering team challenge.

Great Swamp Ecosystems

• Grades: 9-College
• Duration: 2 hours
• Offered: Year-round

Students take part in an in-depth study of the fauna and flora of the major ecosystems in the Great Swamp. Current environmental issues in New Jersey, such as invasive species and watershed issues, are also stressed. Lesson content can be adapted to fit class needs.

Lenape Life

• Grades: 3-8
• Duration: 2 hours
• Offered: Year-round

Ever visit a wigwam? Explore the culture of the Lenape Indians of New Jersey through their food, medicine, shelter, tools, and beliefs. An emphasis is placed on the importance of the natural world in their daily existence.

New! Live Animal Extension

• Grades: PreK-12
• Duration: 45 minutes
• Offered: Year-round
• $75 for up to 60 students

Want to extend your visit to the Great Swamp? Enhance your field trip with a live animal presentation! Using a variety of native and exotic animals, our naturalists will entertain and educate your students about animal adaptations, wildlife conservation issues, food chains, and more! Call to find out about our current selection of animals. $75 for up to 60 students.

Maple Sugaring

• Grades: 3-12
• Duration: 2 hours
• Offered: January – March

Students discover the sweet secrets of making maple syrup through a indoor presentation on the history of maple sugaring, identifying and tapping a maple tree, and more. Outdoors, the students collect sap, observe the evaporation process, and then sample freshly made maple syrup.

Nature Detectives

• Grades: 3-6
• Duration: 2 hours
• Offered: Year-round

Who's been roaming the Great Swamp? Students search for animal signs, homes, sounds, and other clues left behind by wild residents. Teams of students will explore their own study sites looking for evidence of animals and applying the new skills they have learned.

Nature Nuts

• Grades: PreK-2
• Duration: 1 hour
• Offered: Year-round

Curious youngsters learn how to stay safe and have fun while learning a great deal about the natural environment during this introductory walk. Hands-on activities emphasize respect for the natural world and its creatures.

Sense-ational

• Grades: K-2
• Duration: 1.5 hours
• Offered: Year-round

This lesson emphasizes the sensory approach to exploring the natural world. Children enjoy experiencing nature through their five senses while learning how animals and plants use senses to survive.

The World in the Water

• Grades: 5-12
• Duration: 2 hours
• Offered: Spring, Summer and Fall

Students are amazed to discover the many tiny creatures that live in our pond as they collect some for study. They also learn how these macroinvertebrates can be water quality indicators.

Whose Home?

• Grades: 2-5
• Duration: 2 hours
• Offered: Year-round

Students compare and contrast forest, meadow, swamp, marsh, and pond habitats through firsthand observation. Fun activities help the children to understand the characteristics of habitats that all animals, plants, and even humans need to survive.

Pyramid Mountain

Nature Nuts

• Grades: PreK-2
• Duration: 1.5 hours
• Offered: Year-round

Curious youngsters learn how to stay safe and have fun while learning a great deal about the natural environment during this introductory walk. Hands-on activities emphasize respect for the natural world and its creatures.

Sense-ational

• Grades: K-2
• Duration: 1.5 hours
• Offered: Year-round

This lesson emphasizes the sensory approach to exploring the natural world. Children enjoy experiencing nature through their five senses while learning how animals and plants use senses to survive.

Fantastic Forest

• Grades: 1-4
• Duration: 2 hours
• Offered: Year-round

Discover the wonders of the forest habitat and its inhabitants through hands-on activities and exploration. Students focus on trees as they learn about plant life cycles, as well as the jobs of roots, leaves, bark, branches, and more.

Cool Creepy Crawlies

• Grades: 3-6
• Duration: 2 hours
• Offered: 5/15 - 10/15

Students study live insects and some of their relatives by examining body characteristics, habits, and adaptations through indoor and outdoor activities.

Bird-Brained

• Grades: 3-6
• Duration: 2 hours
• Offered: Fall, Winter and Spring

What's so special about feathered friends? As they hike through different habitats, observing and identifying birds, students are introduced to the amazing adaptations, behaviors, and habits of these winged creatures.

Nature Detectives

• Grades: 3-6
• Duration: 2 hours
• Offered: Fall, Winter and Spring

Who's been roaming Pyramid Mountain? Students search for animal signs, homes, sounds, and other clues left behind by wild residents. During the lesson, the concept of food webs is introduced.

Hiking Through History

• Grades: 3-8
• Duration: 2 hours
• Offered: Fall, Winter and Spring

Travel through a billion years of history in just two hours. Students take a fascinating journey through the history of the area from mountain-building events through European settlement and up to the present.

Rock On!

• Grades: 3-8
• Duration: 2 hours
• Offered: Fall, Winter and Spring

New Jersey's geologic history is literally etched in stone! During this lesson, students hunt for rocks and minerals along the trail, study glacial formations and climb ridges made of New Jersey's oldest rocks.

Backbone Bonanza

• Grades: 3-8
• Duration: 2 hours
• Offered: Fall and Spring

Who has backbone and who is spineless in the animal kingdom? Find out about vertebrates and invertebrates as students handle a multitude of touchable nature objects, view specimens, and take a hike to categorize all the animal life found.

Get Lost

• Grades: 3-12
• Duration: 2 hours
• Offered: Year-round

Classes discover the basics of orienteering, combining science, math, and history as they learn about early navigational tools and basic map and compass use. Following a series of hands-on activities, the lesson culminates with an orienteering team challenge.

Lenape Life in Winter

• Grades: 9-College
• Duration: 2 hours
• Offered: Offered in Winter Only

The Lenape Indians depended on the wise use of and respect for the local flora and fauna, especially in the winter. Learn how they prepared for and lived through the harsh winter season with nature's help.

Ecosystem Exploration

• Grades: 3-12
• Duration: 2 hours
• Offered: Winter

Students observe a variety of habitats firsthand and determine their defining characteristics and species. A special emphasis is placed on the conservation challenges in these ecosystems, such as invasive species, erosion, species overpopulation, preservation vs. recreation, and human impact. Lesson content can be adapted to fit curriculum needs.

Monarch Mania

• Grades: 3-8
• Duration: 2 hours
• Offered: August and September

The life cycle and migration pattern of Monarch butterflies is among the most amazing stories in the animal kingdom. Activities and games emphasize metamorphosis and the adaptations that enable this insect to survive in the natural world. In our milkweed garden, students will observe first-hand the community of organisms that depend on milkweed plants.

Frelinghuysen Arboretum

Plants Around Us

• Grades: PreK-4
• Duration: PreK-K: 1 hour; 1-4: 1.5 hours
• Offered: Fall, Winter and Spring

Roots, stems, leaves, and flowers – each of these parts has an important function. This workshop offers a basic introduction to the world of plants. Children discover the interconnectivity between plants and themselves through firsthand investigations of plants. Weather permitting, the class goes outside to explore the arboretum's gardens and see the diversity of plant life. Every child will take home a plant that they planted during the program.

Trees - In Your Own Backyard

• Grades: PreK-5
• Duration: 1.5 hours
• Offered: Fall, Winter and Spring

Trees are some of the largest living organisms on earth. Using the living laboratory of the arboretum grounds, students investigate the uses, as well as the diversity of these tremendous plants. They learn the functions and uses of the major parts of a tree and discover the importance of trees to all of us for homes, shelter, food, and more. Depending on the season, children plant an indoor tree to take home or start some trees from seed.

Seeds - Where it All Begins

• Grades: 1-5
• Duration: 1.5 hours
• Offered: Fall, Winter and Spring

Most plants begin their lives as tiny seeds. Under the right conditions, they grow to produce roots, stems, leaves, flowers, and finally, more seeds so that the cycle begins again. Children explore questions such as: Are seeds alive? How long can a seed last? How does a seed know when to start growing? Outside, children will gather a collection of seeds. Inside, they plant a variety of seeds to grow at home.

Bulbs - Plant in a Package

• Grades: 2-5
• Duration: 1.5 hours
• Offered: September, October and November

What makes bulbs so special? More than just an early sign of spring, bulbs produce some of the most easily recognizable plants. This workshop introduces students to a bulb's uniqueness in the plant world. Students explore a bulb's special growth cycle and its relationship with the seasons and climate. Outside, children explore how autumn effects changes in plants. Children plant and take home a bulb to "force."

Propagation - No Seed? No Problem

• Grades: 3-8
• Duration: 1.5 hours
• Offered: Fall, Winter and Spring

Tips, divisions, runners, and offshoots are just a few of the ways that plants reproduce without seeds. Students examine different methods of propagation and plant several different types of specimens to take home. Outside, students explore how plants reproduce by the vegetative process.

Backpack Field Trip: I <3 Trees

• Grades: 1-5
• Duration: 1.5 hours
• Offered: Fall, Winter and Spring

This self-guided backpack tour gives teachers and chaperones information, activities, and games for use during a class visit to The Frelinghuysen Arboretum. These materials help classes to discover some of New Jersey's most useful and interesting trees. Want to measure a tree without a ruler? Learn how! Wondering what are the most common trees in New Jersey? Discover and see them up close! Each backpack has supplies and activities for up to 30 children. Backpack field trips may be rescheduled due to inclement weather, availability permitting.

Backpack Field Trip: Math in the Garden

• Grades: 3-5
• Duration: 1.5 hours
• Offered: Fall, Winter and Spring

Explore the different gardens of The Frelinghuysen Arboretum with "multiples" of math games and activities. Students see firsthand how numbers work in nature as they explore measuring, estimating, symmetry, graphing, and more. Count the number of leaves on a tree; see patterns in flowers and leaves; and search for triangles everywhere! Each backpack contains materials for 30 children and allows teachers to travel through the gardens making math come to life. This self-guided tour allows for teachers, students, and chaperones to move freely throughout the park and includes follow-up materials to reinforce concepts in the classroom. Backpack field trips may be rescheduled due to inclement weather, availability permitting.