SNOW! It’s great for snowballs and sledding. It also presents a whole other way for exploring the outdoors and learning about Maine wildlife in the winter. While it may feel challenging to observe wildlife in winter, leafless trees and snow provide ample opportunities for spotting birds, evidence …
Environmental Education
Reflections on Fall Preschool Outreach
It was a fun-filled fall for Maine Audubon’s Gilsland Farm based education team as we traveled as far north as Brunswick and as far south as Saco to deliver nature-based and developmentally appropriate programs for early learners ages 2-5. Between the months of September and December, we delivered …
Campers became Stream Explorers this summer in Auburn
(This is the third guest blog post in our occasional series, Stream Explorers and Youth) This summer at the YMCA of Auburn-Lewiston’s Outdoor Learning and Education Center (OLEC) we had the opportunity to run a Stream Explorers activity as part of our regular summer camp programming. The center …
At Fields Pond, high school students get a week of hands-on outdoor learning
The staff at Maine Audubon’s Fields Pond Audubon Center was excited to offer a week-long summer field intensive this August for Bangor area high school students. This work-study course was designed with a focus on educating students in three main topics: wildlife habitat protection, forest ecology, …
Fields Pond Update: Youth activities were highlights for June
There’s not much we love more than seeing young people experiencing the wildlife and habitat at Fields Pond Audubon Center. So our busy month of June brought us much delight, and with the start of summer camp, July and August promise to deliver more of the same. In June, more than a dozen youth …
Exploring Creek Critters in Kindergarten: Caddisflies, Mayflies and Stoneflies, OH MY!
Late in May my class of seven kindergarteners at the Children’s House Montessori School set out to explore the stream at our satellite campus in Rockport. Our small school is located in downtown Camden but since fall 2020, we have spent each autumn and late spring in a 100% outdoor based setting …
LearningWorks: A Year of Highlights!
As the school year comes to a close, here are some highlights from our partnership with LearningWorks, an after school academic enrichment program for elementary school students. Last fall, as an environmental educator for Maine Audubon, I began visiting students at Portland’s Reiche Community …
A Snapping Turtle Story: Good luck, Muddy!
In September 2022, a nest full of baby Snapping Turtles hatched here at Maine Audubon’s Gilsland Farm Audubon Center in Falmouth, Maine. We kept one of them, the biggest and the muddiest, to spend the winter in our Discovery Room, so it could teach us all about the early life of these ancient …
The next step of Muddy’s journey!
Early last September, a nest full of baby Snapping Turtles hatched here at Gilsland Farm in Falmouth. We found as many of them as we could and moved most of them to different locations near the pond and the Presumpscot River, where they could safely crawl to the water. We kept one of them, the …