News from Schools

From as early as kindergarten, we teach children about the natural world through firsthand experience. Like a footbridge across a remote hiking trail, each new exploration strengthens the link that connects children to the world outside. By the end of their journey with the Harris Center, students will have watched birds, searched for amphibians and insects, studied animal tracks, surveyed wetlands and tested local water quality. With one foot in a snowshoe and the other in muck we trek on together learning the sweetness that comes with knowing the terrain.

A Harris Center school program experience provides students in K-12 with a continuum of experiences and opportunities. 

Nature Study
The Harris Center connects children to the natural world around and validates and strengthens this connection.

Hancock 2nd grader gets an up close look at a creature from a pond.

Age appropriate science skills
Even the youngest students learn basic science skills by recording their observations. Abstract concepts are translated into hands on experiences and science skills come to life as students experience the real life world of their schoolyard and backyard. Above all, students find a safe place to ask their own questions about nature’s mysteries.

Conant High School students gather chemical data on the Contoocook River as part of their River Monitoring program. The yearly chemical and biological data they collect helps inform the Contoocook River Advisory Committee on the relative healthof the Contoocook River.

Discover nature as a source of inspiration and creativity
Children learn the connection between nature and creativity by spending quiet time outdoors and recording these moments by drawing or writing. From these experiences, students are moved to write poems and stories, create art and inspire others.

Greenfield Elementary School 4th grader in quiet contemplation, composes a letter to herself at the top of Bald Mountain as part of Greenfield's end of the school year field trip.

Appreciate the local landscape outside their schools
After classroom instruction, we take students outside to explore school yards, local wilderness areas, and regional landmarks, including 8,700 acres of protected lands surrounding the Harris Center. By the time they are seniors, Harris Center “graduates” have explored their local forests by day and night and found many special spots that they return to again and again.

Hancock Elementary School 4th graders search for tracks behind their school. The bridge they are crossing on, was designed and constructed by Hancock Elementary School and Great Brook MiddleSchool students in the spring of 2004, with the Harris Center, linking the elementary school to town conservation land.