Search for School Programs at Broadmoor

Outreach option: Explore your local environment to discover the amazing ways plants and animals use their unique adaptations to thrive—from behaviors to deal with changing seasons to structures for dispersing seeds—and more.
Field trip option: On a field trip to a wildlife sanctuary, explore a combination of field, forest, or wetland habitats to discover the amazing ways plants and animals use their unique adaptations to thrive, such as behaviors to deal with changing seasons, structures to disperse seeds, or body parts to hunt underwater.
This program can focus on animals, plants, or both. Consider adding additional visits to compare different seasons.

Outreach option: Explore evidence of the short-term and long-term changes in the landscape around your school by examining signs of erosion and weathering, and glacial features if present.
Field Trip option: On a field trip to a wildlife sanctuary, explore evidence of the short-term and long-term changes in the landscape by examining signs of erosion and weathering, glacial features, and soil composition.

Learn how our local ecosystems are changing over time and how the ways humans live are impacting our climate. What is the balance between Earth's limited resources and our basic needs? Explore how wildlife sanctuary staff manages the land and positive, climate-friendly changes that can be made in our communities.

Follow the sun's energy from producers through consumers and finally to decomposers. Students will conduct an experiment to test if plants transpire, while observing and connecting local plants and animals in a food chain.

Fall and Spring

Students investigate the forces that shape the earth on a large scale and small scale. They will apply learning by identifying evidence of erosion and weathering in nature or using samples in class.

Students will explore a freshwater environment as an ecosystem, considering biotic and abiotic factors, relationships in nature and how organisms fill various niches. They will use microscopes to look at macro-invertebrates and plants collected from the water, focusing on evolution, adaptations and classification. Students also consider complex avenues for energy to transfer from the sun through living things in this environment.

Have a Broadmoor Teacher Naturalist lead an interactive, hands-on lesson in your classroom, using natural materials, games, movement and inquiry to engage students in learning. May also occur on your school grounds or nearby outside areas.
Our staff can support student learning in life or earth science frameworks: erosion and weathering, shifting plates, renewable and non-renewable energy, or adaptations. We will custom design a program based on the standards you wish to meet.

Have a Broadmoor Teacher Naturalist lead an interactive, hands-on lesson in your classroom, using natural materials, games, movement and inquiry to engage students in learning. May also include exploration and investigation of your school grounds or nearby outside areas.
We will custom design a program based on the standards you wish to meet in life or earth science frameworks: cycling of water or food energy on earth, and/or the functions and structure of plants.

Create a forest in the classroom as students become a plant—acting out the jobs each part performs to keep the plant healthy and strong! They'll also observe samples of plant parts, brought in to class or outside at your school.

Students sweep net in a meadow, turn logs in the forest and observe wetlands to find plants and animals that meet their habitat needs for food, water, shelter and figure out why that environment is the best space.

Fall, Winter, Spring

Discover what animals and plants need to live and why their habitat is the best match through a combination of presentation and hands-on explorations of living samples from two different environments.

Outreach option: Explore a natural area in your community or schoolyard as you look for tracks and other signs of native wildlife. Search for food, water, shelter, and space that supports the basic needs of the plants and animals that live here.

Field Trip option: On a visit to a wildlife sanctuary, explore field, forest, and wetland habitats as you look for tracks and other signs of native wildlife. Search for food, water, shelter, and space that support the basic needs of the plants and animals that live there.

Exploring a meadow, a forest and a marsh as habitats, children observe signs of life and discover how plants and animals depend on one another, and are linked in food chains.

Fall, Winter, Spring

Observe biological artifacts for similarities and differences in body parts, structures, behaviors, and functions as you investigate what it means for plants and animals to be adapted to their home. This session is a great pre-visit to combine with the Life in the Water or Habitat Explorations field trips.

Have a Broadmoor teacher naturalist lead an interactive, hands-on lesson at your school, using natural materials, games, movement and sensory exploration to engage young children in learning.
Students can learn about almost any life or earth science frameworks, such as living and non-living, seasonal cycles, specific animals or plants, life cycles, etc. We will custom-design a program based on the concepts you wish them to learn.

Use dip-nets and other tools as you explore the unique life cycles of the organisms that live in the water and depend on wetland and upland habitats to survive.

At Broadmoor, this includes a choice of the marsh or vernal pool.

Students will learn to look at the "big picture" and see the marsh as an ecosystem, where mammals, such as the beaver, use the marsh as their habitat. They will look at macro-invertebrates collected from the marsh, focusing on animal adaptations and characteristics. Students also learn how aquatic plants are adapted to live in the water and fill different niches.
Spring

Students will become finches living on the Galapagos Islands. Through the use of hand-puppets, each student "bird" will try to feed on the islands using their specific behavioral and physical adaptations. Depending on success, the birds will decide if they stay or migrate to find the best environment to meet their needs. Through the simulation, students experience the variety of challenges, competition, and success that drive evolution and survival in nature. If time permits, they can also experience the influence of changes in the environment and attempt to be successful enough to reproduce and pass on traits to offspring.

This lesson requires one location to set up, that provides open space for the islands and an area for students to process data on a worksheet and engage in discussion. Two teacher naturalists faciliatate this program for 1 class at a time.

Explore the mysteries of nature through the seasons, from the comfort of your classroom and/or schoolyard habitat. Students will use their senses, compare and contrast, and learn through movement activities and observations. This program can include samples brought to your site (pond life, forest floor specimens, etc.)

Join Mass Audubon educators as we learn how energy from the sun powers life on Earth, both living processes and the technologies we use to power our communities. Each lesson explores one aspect of the energy cycle within biotic and abiotic systems; including photosynthesis, consumers, decomposers, renewable, and non-renewable energies.

Trees provide much more than shade or pretty additions to city streets and neighborhood parks. This unit explores habitats, adaptations, and life cycles, with trees as a unifying theme. With accessibility to all learners as a priority, lessons highlight the diversity of trees across various Massachusetts habitats, including suburban, urban and rural areas. Nature journaling assignments highlight observation and other science skills and encourage students to choose a tree near their home or school to chronicle throughout the unit.

Are trees the solution to climate change? Through place-based, inquiry driven investigation, students will study the role of trees in the carbon cycle, and expand their investigation to find out whether forest sequestration, or indeed any one nature-based solution, is enough to fight climate change. Finally, students will explore their own role as a changemaker by planning a collective, climate-positive action.

In this unit we will explore different types of "minibeasts", or invertebrates, like worms, pill bugs, and more. Students will engage in outdoor investigations to find out where the best place is for a minibeast to live. Students will document their observations in field journals as they explore different habitats in their schoolyard and use models to explain how these habitats may or may not support the needs of invertebrates. Finally, students will expand their investigation to explore the role invertebrates play to enrich the soil, and understand how humans can learn from them to reduce their footprint and protect their local environment.

In this unit, students will get outside and investigate the ways stronger storms impact their communities, specifically through rain and snow. They will identify places of vulnerability and places of resilience in their schoolyard or neighborhood. As a culminating project, they will design solutions to help reduce the impacts of stronger storms in their area and communicate it with members of their community.

Through science practices and pedagogy specific to outdoor education and methodology based on the Lawrence Hall of Science BEETLES professional learning sessions, participants will build their confidence in instructing outdoors and practice skills they can use with students. Program areas can include observation skills; questioning and discussion strategies; the nature and practice of science, evidence, and explanation; and best practice in teaching and learning, field journaling, and student activities.

Through science practices and pedagogy specific to outdoor education and methodology based on the Lawrence Hall of Science BEETLES professional learning sessions, participants will build their confidence in instructing outdoors and practice skills they can use with students. Program areas can include observation skills; questioning and discussion strategies; the nature and practice of science, evidence, and explanation; and best practice in teaching and learning, field journaling, and student activities.

Through science practices and pedagogy specific to outdoor education and methodology based on the Lawrence Hall of Science BEETLES professional learning sessions, participants will build their confidence in instructing outdoors and practice skills they can use with students. Program areas can include observation skills; questioning and discussion strategies; the nature and practice of science, evidence, and explanation; and best practice in teaching and learning, field journaling, and student activities.

Manipulate different substrates with water and moving air to investigate the effects of wind and water, then work in teams to create and test solutions to prevent erosion.

This program requires stations that classes can rotate through due to the amount of supplies that students can manipulate and resetting between groups.

Experiment with water to find where it hides in nature and how it can be liquid, solid, or vapor.

PreK-ESS2-3, PreK-PS1-1

Use dip-nets and other scientific tools to explore wetland plants and animals and their unique adaptations for living in water. Learn to identify specific organisms and understand the special characteristics of different water bodies and ecosystems.
At Broadmoor, available wetlands include the marsh, vernal pool, streams, and the Charles River.

Use dip-nets and other scientific tools to explore wetland plants and animals and their unique adaptations for living in water. Learn to identify specific organisms and understand the special characteristics of different water bodies and ecosystems.
Wetland availability near your school or at identified natural areas will determine what wetland environments can be explored.