Field Trips with the New Haven Land Trust
*Photo and videos courtesy of the New Haven Land Trust.*
If you are like many of our alumni, you may have come away from our field trip to Grannis Island on the first day of Seedlings feeling committed to taking your students out into the field on a regular basis, but not known where to start. Cori Merchant, Preserves and Education Coordinator at New Haven Land Trust (NHLT), would like to help you make this happen. NHLT has received a grant to help them build up field trip programming to their nature preserves: Long Wharf (a beach habitat with a tidal marsh), Quinnipiac Meadows (a coastal woodland and prairie with trails), and Pond Lily (formerly a woodland area, but after a damn removal two years ago, now a prairie with a river running alongside it). It can be all too easy growing up in New Haven without ever realizing that we are in the midst of a watershed. These preserves — natural oases hidden within plain sight of our urban landscape — can open ours and our students’ eyes to the power, beauty, and importance of the environment we live in. (Check out the videos below for a little glimpse of what the Preserves have to offer.) Field trips are free for New Haven public schools, and are full of hands-on activities based around what students are studying in the classroom.
After finding out from teachers what is being investigated in the classroom and learning what they would like to link to, Ms. Merchant designs a two-hour long trip that carefully considers what a specific site can offer students and strikes a balance between free exploration and guided instruction. Last spring, Conte West School’s second grade classes visited the Long Wharf Nature Preserve three times over the course of their study of animal adaptations. In their first trip, after some free exploration time involving a scavenger hunt and gathering shells, children learned about the adaptions of different mollusks they found on the beach, played a game in which they used these adaptations, and had a relay to identify and sort shells. While the first two visits to the preserve were focused on environmental education activities such as these, the third visit was a “fun day,” and — driven by the students – included a trash pick-up as a “thank you” to the site.
Below are some topics around which the Land Trust has developed programming:
- Ecosystems, food webs/food chains, predator and prey, producers/consumers
- Habitats: Salt marsh, woodlands, beach/mud flats, river, estuary, and prairie
- Plant and animal natural history/life cycles, animal adaptations, mollusks of Long Island Sound
- Water, water cycle, water quality, water filtration, watersheds, erosion, tides
- Environmental stewardship, conservation, pollution, trash/recycling
- Writing in nature – a grade appropriate writing activity incorporated into your time at the Nature Preserve
If this kind of field trip could fit into your curriculum, please call the Land Trust (203-562-6655) and ask for Cori Merchant, or email her at: cori.merchant@newhavenlandtrust.org. Be sure to let us at Seedlings know and send us photos!
Good information. Thanks for sharing this great post.
Top 10 CBSE schools in Vellore