Search for School Programs at Drumlin Farm

This program can be run at your school or at a sanctuary.
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.
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.

At your school or nearby naturla area, 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.
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.
Locations: Your school and/or any Metro West wildlife sanctuary

Meet live wildlife ambassadors and explore how humans are impacting native species and the habitats on which they depend. Explore what we can do at home and in our communities to protect local ecosystems and support biodiversity for climate resiliency.
Location: Your school / program

Learn how our local ecosystems are changing over time and how the way humans live impacts our climate. What is the balance between Earth's limited resources and our basic needs? Investigate Drumlin Farm's sustainable farming practices and land management techniques as we discuss what we observe and climate-friendly changes we can make in our communities.

Explore patterns of change for the different communities in the temperate biome: fields, forest, and wetlands. Identify how organisms relate with one another (predation, mutualism, competition, dependency, and parasitism) and revisit how organisms are adapted to their environment and how energy moves through trophic levels.
This program can run at our sanctuaries or around your school or nearby areas.

Designed for groups of 12-15 students, Environmental Explorers is a weekly afterschool offering that connects students in grades K-8 to nature wherever they are.
Each week, students dig into a new topic while building science practices and naturalist skills. When possible, lessons will bring students outside and use whatever environment is readily available.

Delve into the ecology of a working farm, exploring its energy, life cycles, and ecological issues. What does it take to manage healthy soil and protect habitats for a resilient climate, or raise animals and crops for market? Participate in seasonal farm chores such as feeding, mucking, planting, harvesting, and weeding.
Location: Drumlin Farm Wildlife Sanctuary

At your school, we'll bring hands-on seasonal farm activities for your group to explore in class, such as planting seeds or carding sheared sheep's wool.
On a field trip to Drumlin Farm, learn about growing crops and raising livestock, helping directly with fun farm chores. Chores may include planting, weeding, harvesting, or caring for farm animals. Schedule multiple visits to experience the farm in different seasons.
Locations: Your school and/or Drumlin Farm Wildlife Sanctuary

Choose either a single school-based program or field trip, or combine the two into a series.
In the classroom, explore samples from freshwater ecosystems hands-on and under microscopes, focusing on your choice of biotic and abiotic factors, evolution and adaptation, biotic health indicators, organism identification, or vulnerabilities to climate change.
Take a field trip to a wildlife sanctuary where you'll observe animal and plant life that live in freshwater ponds, streams, marshes, rivers, or vernal pools.
Locations: Your school and/or any Metro West wildlife sanctuary

Choose either a single school-based program or field trip, or combine the two into a series.
Discover the amazing habitats, plants and wildlife found around your school or in your community. Search for the sources of food, water, shelter, and space that plants and animals need in order to successfully live there.
On a visit to a wildlife sanctuary, investigate field, forest, and wetland habitats to search for the sources of food, water, shelter, and space that plants and animals need in order to successfully live there. Observe similarities and differences in body parts, structures, behaviors, and functions as you learn what it means for wildlife to be adapted to their home.
Locations: Your school and/or any Metro West wildlife sanctuary

Meet live wildlife as you compare their physical and behavioral adaptations and how these relate to their roles within an ecosystem. Learn where they live and how climate change may be affecting them. This program can focus on an animal group, habitat, energy flow, or seasonal adaptations.
Locations: Your school

Choose either a single school-based program or field trip, or combine the two into a series.
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.
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.
Locations: Your school and/or any Metro West wildlife sanctuary

Choose either a single school-based program or field trip, or combine the two into a series.
In the classroom, use scientific tools to investigate samples of aquatic life. Add a live wildlife visit to look at adaptations to habitat, explore an aquatic food web, or see life cycle stages.
In the field, 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.
Locations: Your school and/or any Metro West wildlife sanctuary

Explore fields, gardens, barns, and trails at your own pace as you experience life on a farm. Visit various hands-on, farm- and nature-based learning stations where you'll engage in daily farm activities and learn about the animals that live in New England. Program runs on specific dates, please inquire.
Locations: Drumlin Farm Wildlife Sanctuary

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 a live animal.
Locations: At your school or a community greenspace

Through hands-on learning in the classroom and in the field, students connect with and build an understanding of watersheds as complex ecosystems, learn about climate change and how it impacts a watershed, and develop and implement action plans to mitigate a climate-related problem they identify. Over a 3-year cycle, teachers participate in professional development, learn to facilitate programs on their own, and eventually serve as mentors for new teachers.
Locations: Your school and various local watershed destinations

Working directly in fields and barns, explore the challenges of growing food and how it connects with climate change. Depending on the season, participate in farm chores such as planting, weeding, harvesting, mucking, or feeding animals.
Locations: Drumlin Farm Wildlife Sanctuary

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.

Choose either a single school-based program or field trip, or combine the two into a series.
What is soil made of? Compare different soil samples and investigate their properties using scientific tools. We can bring soil samples to you or we can explore soil near your school.
In the field, learn about how healthy soil supports healthy food and a healthy planet at Drumlin Farm or learn how soil holds secrets to the past at Broadmoor and Habitat.
Locations: Your school and/or any Metro West wildlife sanctuary (field trip theme varies by location)

Choose either a single school-based program or field trip, or combine the two into a series.
Dig into a classroom soil-lab with samples brought by our staff, analyzing the composition and properties to understand soil's function in local ecosystems and determine its health. Learn how healthy soil can support a resilient climate.
On a trip to a wildlife sanctuary, compare soil from field, forest, and wetland habitats, analyzing the composition and properties to understand its function in local ecosystems and determine its health. Learn how healthy soil can support resilient climate, and (at Drumlin Farm only) how it supports healthy food too.
Locations: Your school and/or any Metro West wildlife sanctuary (field trip theme varies by location)

In the classroom, meet live wildlife to support learning about specific adaptation connections, such as coping with seasonal changes, life cycles, and stages of development. Or, take an in-depth exploration into the physical and behavioral adaptations of a particular group of animals.

Locations: At your school / program

Listen to a favorite children's book and meet a wild character from the story! Learn about where the animal lives, what they eat, and their unique adaptations that help them to interact with their environment.
Locations: At your school