Nine students huddled around the outdoor learning laboratory, working in small groups to build models of living communities in specific climates. I felt an unexpected burst of excitement as I listened to their conversations. I could hear them making decisions about their model communities and testing and changing them as problems arose. I challenged them with questions like: What kind of plants and animals would live in your climate? Where should you place the human house in relation to those living things? How can you protect your community if disaster strikes, and what kind of disaster would likely strike in your climate? These 3rd graders had spent all day learning about the connections and distinctions between weather and climate, as well as the different climates found around the world. Now, they were putting their knowledge into practice, just as my peer educators and I had hoped for as we wrote the curriculum! It is a magical experience to invest so much thought and effort into designing an environmental education curriculum and then see it come to life. 

 

 

The beginnings of the new Weather and Climate Connectors curriculum started with the end. The 2023-2025 cohort of graduate fellows, also known as the TADpoleS, took the 3rd grade science standards and transformed them into what students should walk away being able to do and understand after the program. With this framework in mind, we then created engaging, nature-based activities that met the established learning goals. This process was collaborative, with each of us providing feedback and revisions as activities were written into the curriculum and each activity was taught to other educators during our winter training and revised as necessary. 

 

Outdoor Learning Labs

Finally, it was time to teach the curriculum to 3rd grade students throughout Eagle County! What better way to celebrate the new program than a fresh dumping of 6” of snow overnight! The students were thrilled to spend the day hopping from place to place on top of the fresh snow like snowshoe hares in their snowshoes! The morning was busy with cold weather fashion shows, collecting data on the local weather, and learning to distinguish between weather and climate. The afternoon was spent exploring how local plants and animals survive Colorado’s continental climate in winter, discussing the weather hazards that students’ communities face in a continental climate, and taking a surprise hot cocoa break. All of this learning and fun accumulated to designing and preparing their model climate communities for weather hazards in our new outdoor learning labs. As the bus pulled away with the kids waving goodbye, my brain buzzed with excitement of how the day had gone and what changes could be made to even further improve this new curriculum. Following the new curriculum from paper to practice demonstrates how curricula at Walking Mountains are constantly evolving to awaken a sense of wonder and inspire environmental stewardship in students of all ages.