Schoolyard Habitats®

Why should you create a schoolyard habitat?

The planning, design, implementation, and on-going monitoring and maintenance of a schoolyard habitat provides endless opportunities to meet and exceed high academic standards across the curriculum. Teaching with Schoolyard Habitats® as an integrating context across the subject areas can both support and deepen the quality of instruction and student engagement.

Educators who participate in the Schoolyard Habitats® program realize that use of these outdoor classrooms is an excellent way to meet the requirements of national and state educational standards.

• Science Standards
A schoolyard habitat serves as a living laboratory where students engage in hands-on inquiries into the natural world.
• Geography and Social Studies Standards
Geography and social studies involve understanding connections between people, social constructs and the environment, and the Schoolyard Habitats program can be applied successfully to help teach those connections by assisting students in understanding both space and place.
• Math Standards
A schoolyard habitat provides students with the opportunity to apply math concepts to the real world; whether estimating numbers of plants in an on-site plant community or looking for geometric shapes in nature, an outdoor area is full of mathematical wonders.
• English Standards
A schoolyard habitat provides a quiet space for creative writing about nature or a research laboratory where students can develop research, writing and communication skills.

In today's learning environments, where schools are striving to meet and exceed high standards of learning, educators and youth leaders must be creative in presenting content. The schoolyard can provide a valuable avenue for reinforcing concepts for students.

Reaching High Academic Standards on the Schoolyard The planning, design, implementation and on-going monitoring and maintenance of a Schoolyard Habitats® project provide endless opportunities to meet and exceed high academic standards across the curriculum. (424 Kb)

Schoolyard Habitats Factsheet National Wildlife Federation's Schoolyard Habitats® program provides administrators and educators a framework for incorporating environment-based education into their school curriculum or youth service programs. (172 Kb)

These factsheets are in Adobe PDF Format - Click on either link to download. Click here if you need help with PDF files.

Inspirational Stories About Schoolyard Habitat Building

• Down By the Schoolyard
  An environmental activist in Arlington, Virginia, describes his experience with building schoolyard habitat sites.

• A Case for Schoolyard Habitats
  A coordinator of the Schoolyard Habitats program outlines the reasons why building schoolyard habitats is a crucial tool for quality education.

• The Schoolyard Habitat Movement: What It Is and Why Children Need It
  An early childhood educator explains how building schoolyard habitats is important to the healthy development of children.