The Natural World Program encourages an ecological perspective on all aspects of human life. By this we simply mean viewing the world from the basic understanding that human beings gain their sustenance and live out their lives through wonderful networks of interdependent relationships.
These relationships, whether they be social, cultural, environmental or inter-generational, show themselves through a range of complexity – from the very physical relations we share with things we depend on for life such as air, soil, water, and warmth; to the more abstract relations we share with each other in our social world, such as the processes where consensus is formed concerning objective facts, or the way agreement comes about concerning what constitutes reliable evidence, or the way language works to enable us to understand statements and share meaning.
A keen awareness of the depth of these mutual dependencies tends to generate a sense of obligation to them in the curious and eager-hearted mind.
In the Natural World Program, this is where our ecological focus ultimately leads us: to discovering and exploring these relationships through fun and equitable discussion, bursts of inspiration, and practical applications.
Kindergarten & 1st grades
Planet Explorers! – At home in the Oak Hill forest and prairies seeing what we can see – nature journaling
Beekeeping – Honey Bee Sociology – Caring for our bees, sharing in the honey harvest
Young Cartographers! The World of Mapmaking – Designing maps that explain the world – communicating landscapes and ideas through pictorial representations
Young Philosophers! – Discovering the relationships between thought & world with children’s literature
Mapping the Unknown! – Studying the Oregon Trail and westward expansion through exploration and advanced cartography
Avian Flight – Understanding flight by building working bird and drone models
Where are We? – Landscape Geography – A look at our unique place on the planet through local geological, historical, and cultural perspective
5th Grade Recycling Crew – 5th graders collect and aggregate our weekly recyclables