Spring Valley Outreach Programs

Spring Valley will bring their outreach program to your site. Topics include forests, worms, spiders, mammals, owls, food chains, food webs, weltands and the water cycle. Students will participate in hands-on activities, songs and games. Programs may be adapted to students in grades one through six and are correlated with Illinois State Standards. Student resources and teacher resources are available for these programs.

Call 847/985-2100 to invite a naturalist from Spring Valley Nature Center to visit your class for a fun-filled session today!

Programs

• Fabulous Forests - Enjoy a woodland adventure! Staff will bring the forest to your class and use it to teach your students about the layers of the forest and the plants and animals that live there. Students will play a version of "concentration" and then reconstruct the entire forest habitat.
• Fantastic Food Chains - Where does energy come from? Everything in nature needs energy to exist. Learn how interconnected we really are and experience the flow of energy through the entire community on earth.
• Fantastic Food Webs - Not only does energy travel from the sun through plants to animals making a food chain, but it also travels between different animals. Foods webs can be very complicated. Through interactive simulations, students will discover the difference between foods chain and food webs.
• Marvelous Mammals - Go on a mammal hunt and discover what is living in Illinois! Students will work in groups with dental formulas, skulls and furs to decipher clues about their mammal. They will learn about carnivores, herbivores and omnivores, and the habitats where they can be found.
• Owls: Predators of the Night - Students will examine owl pellets, identify bones and skulls, graph data, and analyze their results. They will hear owl calls and see actual owl specimens. They will learn how the owl is so extremely well adapted to its nocturnal niche and discover its role in the food chain. Students will even become an owl in a simulation predator/prey game.
• Spectacular Spiders - Learn the lifestyle of this remarkable creature by experiencing the spider sensation game, making your own spider web, putting on a puppet show, playing bingo and piecing together a spider.
• Water! Water! - Your students are familiar with the water cycle, but do they really understand it? Students will put together a giant jigsaw puzzle, then actually become water molecules trying to escape evaporation in an active simulation game. Catch some water vapor and boogie to the beat!
• Wetland Investigations - ents will learn about pH, the variation in oxygen demand of macroinvertebrates and the role that water temperature plays in the types of animals that live in water.
• Wonderful Worms - Have fun learning about this recycler and decomposer! Observe live worms and participate with your students in experiements designed to teach about worms. Students will play an exciting game to find out what its like to be a worm!

Programs by Grade Level

• Grade 1: Fantastic Food Chains; Spectacular Spiders; Water! Water!
• Grade 2: Fabulous Forests; Fantastic Food Chains; Spectacular Spiders; Water! Water!; Wonderful Worms
• Grade 3: Fabulous Forests; Fantastic Food Chains; Spectacular Spiders; Water! Water!; Wonderful Worms
• Grade 4: Fabulous Forests; Fantastic Food Webs; Marvelous Mammals; Owls, Predators of the Night; Water! Water!; Wetland Investigations; Wonderful Worms
• Grade 5: Fantastic Food Webs; Marvelous Mammals; Owls, Predators of the Night; Water! Water!; Wetland Investigations
• Grade 6: Fantastic Food Webs; Marvelous Mammals; Owls, Predators of the Night; Water! Water!; Wetland Investigations

Program Survey

Program Guide

For program descriptions and more information, download the Spring Valley Outreach Program Guide (PDF) or view it below.

Additional Resources to Explore