Outdoor Education
In the lower grades, Bethany students will spend several hours per week with focused learning in and about nature. As they age, they will move from exploration and harvesting, to farming and building, to plant science and creation care… all with a dedicated outdoor education teacher who is passionate about learning in nature.
Below are examples* of high-level learning objectives for each grade:
1st Grade:
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- Be outside as often as possible
- Explore our natural surroundings with curiosity and wonder
- Try new foods
- Learn how things grow
- Eat something they grow
- Be outside as often as possible
2nd Grade:
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- Get your hands dirty
- Work in the Bethany gardens and greenhouse
- Begin developing kitchen skills
- Experience wide varieties of food
- Eat foods they have grown
- Eat foods they have prepared
- Get your hands dirty
3rd Grade:
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- Work, build, grow
- Regularly water, weed, and harvest
- Learn about plant life cycles and compost
- Grow in care/appreciation of nature
- Identify plants and trees around the school
- Learn to build basic outdoor sturctures
- Learn more advanced kitchen skills (measurements, following a recipe, understanding basic cooking vocabulary)
- Work, build, grow
4th Grade:
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- See the web of connections
- Understand that the class content has practical connections to social studies and science:
- Geography and how it affects people (what they can grow/harvest, etc)
- History of foods
- History of native people
- The 3 Sisters (Indigenous American agriculture practices)
- Notice connectedness to nature and to one another
- Continue garden work and animal care
- Advance in cooking skills
- Build increasingly complex projects
- See the web of connections
*Curriculum is subject to changes.