Growing up in eastern Virginia, I was surrounded by maples, hickories, and beeches—leafy in summer, ablaze with color in fall, and stripped bare against the winter sky. I remember a favorite teacher pointing out a skeletal branch in January and …
Students from around the world can have the opportunity to learn about these incredible trees through the distance learning program at Calaveras Big Trees State Park.
Education has always been part of the League’s mission, and our 2018-19 education programs advanced this body of work, reaching more than 8,500 students. Among the highlights:
The North Coast Redwood Education Program brings comprehensive redwood curriculum and field trip opportunities to students who live among California’s North Coast redwood forests.
This spring, hundreds of high school students from around the San Francisco Bay Area and Humboldt County explored coast redwood forests as scientists through the Redwood Education Programs offered by Save the Redwoods League. Students ventured out of the classroom and into the forest to connect to the natural world and learn about climate change and scientific field techniques.
Education Grants Program gives $100,000 every year to various schools, non-profits, and parks throughout the redwood range to enhance redwood education programs and bring more people to our iconic forests.
One of our grantees, the Humboldt County Office of Education, worked with students this year from Fortuna High School’s videography class to create “art” in the redwoods after learning about redwood ecology.
During our redwood field trips with students, Save the Redwoods League tries to appeal to all the different ways redwood trees elicit inspiration for youth. The following haikus were written by students in our Redwoods and Climate Change High School Program.
If you ask high school students what the impacts of climate change have been, they can tell you that the polar ice caps are melting, that we have extreme weather, and that California has been in a drought for the past few years. But if you ask them how climate change will affect our forests and the plants and animals that live in them, they find it harder to come up with an answer.
When children have unstructured play time in nature, they are better observers, they ask questions, and they become more comfortable with their surroundings. Despite its benefits, all too often, unstructured play time is limited for kids today, especially in the outdoors.
Hiking with kids can sometimes feel like a forced march, we’ve all experienced kids complaining about walking for walking’s sake. Obviously, the best remedy for reluctant young hikers is regular doses of candy, but the next best remedy is also super fun and does not contribute to cavities! This is a nature color game that is a trade secret of environmental educators and is really easy to play.
Environmental educators are always juggling what, how much and how long to teach students in nature. Do you let students explore and observe a forest on their own, or do you give them more structured activities? Do you introduce sophisticated …
On March 28th, over 4,000 visitors and volunteer scientists arrived at Muir Woods National Monument ready to learn, discover, and explore this absolutely amazing redwood forest. Thousands more visited the Crissy Field Center for the Biodiversity Festival. Whether or not …
These days, I think it’s a pretty safe bet that many people spend more time on their cell phones — checking email, posting to Facebook, playing games— than they do out in nature. This trend seems especially prevalent among our …
For many people, September symbolizes the start of school: time to pack away the camping gear and get out the pencils, paper and backpacks. Vacations in the redwoods come to a close and are replaced by the routine of shuttling …
