Environmental Education Websites
- Online learning

National Audubon Educator's Page
Audubon Adventures Curricula
Desert Rivers Audubon Kids Page
National Audubon Kids Page
National Audubon Family Birding Page
Green Teacher
Children of the Earth

 

Field Trips

4th & 5th Grade Field Trips-
Scout, Lifelong Learners, other groups

Nina Mason Pulliam Audubon Center - South bank, East side of Salt River, on Central Ave.
Arizona Audubon

This new Nature Center is a state-of-the-art “green” center that will give your students an opportunity to “connect with nature” on 7 acres of desert/wetlands habitat with trails, interactive displays and exhibits, and environmental education programming.

Books

Last Child in the Woods, by Richard Louv - available in our Nature Store!

Visit the National Environmental Education Foundation for suggested reading for students

Environmental Games and Puzzles

Learning Activities

Cornell’s “Bird Sleuth” Online Program

Teachers

Do you want to connect your class with nature or do you have some part of the curriculum you could fulfill with a field trip?

We have a number of ways we can help. In the classroom we can bring presentations and talk to your children about our special desert species, urbanization and conservation issues.

We can help your children mount a survey of the birds in your school grounds and show them how to collect and use the data.

We can help you organize a field trip to one of the bird watching hot spots in the area, like Gilbert Riparian Preserve or Chandler's Veterans' Oasis Park.

We have loaner binoculars for your children to use for the day and advice on how to organize the children for the most productive time and how to follow up on the day back in the classroom.

There are a few things for you to consider before you get in touch with us. Are you looking for an event for your whole year group or for your class alone? Do you want to devote the whole time to bird watching or would you like help organizing a day with more components? Do you want someone to make a few weekly visits to help you do a school survey and learn about data collection or just a single morning birding?

Whatever you need please contact Jamie Bradford and we will do our best to help.

Homeschoolers

For organized home school groups the options are similar to those for teachers (please see above). Please contact us in just the same way.

If you are a very small group or an individual family, however, you may prefer just to come to one of our Family Bird Walks held at Gilbert Water Ranch and Veteran's Oasis Park from October to March (see page……. on this website). If there is a particular part of the curriculum you would like to cover at a bird walk contact us beforehand and we will try to match you with a bird walk leader who can help.

Scouts and Children's Clubs

Whether you want to take the children out to have fun and connect with nature or whether you need help getting that last part of a badge requirement done we should be able to help you. Very often this can be done very simply by attending one of our scheduled Family Bird Walks, just let us know in advance that you are coming so that we have enough leaders. If you need something more specific we can sometimes arrange a special event. For the October to April 2010 to 2011 season we will be participating in badge events at the Rio Salado Nature Center; contact Joy Dingley for more details.

Practical Details

Costs – we make no charges for our services as we are all volunteers. There may be charges for park entry, depending on where you decide to go.

Timing – as we are all volunteers we need several weeks to organize an event where numbers of volunteers are needed.

Please also remember that the best months of the year for outside work are between October and March, it's just too hot for the children otherwise.

We look forward to spending some time out in the open with you!