The Living Planet Aquarium

Do your kids love animals, water and hands on activities? Then the Loveland Living Planet Aquarium is the perfect fit for you. They offer three awesome, free, outreach programs that correlates with the Utah State Core Curriculum by grade level. 

The Rainforest Van Program is available for 2nd grade, the Utah Waters Van Programs is available for 4th grade, and the ecosystems van is available to 6th grade public/charter Utah Students. This is a great and purposeful program to help enrich your students! Take advantage of it! 

The Living Planet Aquarium also offers free professional development workshops throughout the year.

To inquire about an outreach program, please contact their education department at (801)-355-FISH (3474) or email outreach@thelivingplanet.com.

Tracy Aviary Nature Programs

Tracy Aviary has a wide variety of programs in place to help connect kids with nature. Today we want to focus on their Nature Programs. These activities focus on teaching children to interact and connect with the environment. Due to the large number of programs offered, it is easy to find things that can be tied in to core lessons already being taught in class.

“In these nature programs Tracy Aviary educators bring activities to school yards or local parks to help participants explore and discover the nature right in their backyards. Programs are 60 minutes long, and are limited to groups up to 30 participants. ”

— Tracy Aviary Website

Activities currently offered include:

• Mapping Your Park: Learn to create and read maps in a local setting.

• Eco-Art: Creating art out of natural elements.

• Biodiversity Celebration: Explore local living things and learn about their specific adaptations.

• Soundscape: Use sense of sound to learn about the world around us.

• Nature Storytime: Nature-oriented story, games, activities, and free play outside (designed for younger children).

• Details Detective: Become a details detective and represent discoveries and experiences in a nature journal.

• Sensing the Seasons: Learn about how our senses enhance outdoor exploration and participate in Nature Show & Tell.

• Insect Safari: Hunt for local insects and learn about the role that they play in our environment.

• Stream Exploration: Explore water quality and learn about the plants and animals that depend on our local streams and rivers.

The cost is $60 for the first program and $25 additional dollars per program added on top of that. 

Staff from Tracy Aviary take students on a nature walk through a local park.

Red Butte Gardens

This eight-lesson curriculum is designed to teach segments of Utah’s new integrated core curriculum in science, language art, math, and visual arts. Activities are for inquiry based, hands-on teaching and learning.

The curriculum is given to the teachers at the teacher workshop. Every teacher who attends the workshop and arranges for a classroom visit will receive all the supplies and materials needed to teach the lessons the first year. Most of the original materials can be used year after year. A Red Butte Garden staff member comes to your classroom, teaches the first lesson on seed structure and germination, and plants the Wisconsin Fast Plant seeds with the students. The lesson is 90 minutes long.

Timpanogos Cave

This link takes you to Timpanogos Cave's fee waiver/tours/classroom visit options. An educational presentation from a park ranger in your classroom may also be possible, whether your school is able to visit the cave or not. Ranger presentations emphasize grade-level state science core. Call BJ Cluff at (801) 756-5239 ext. 301 or e-mail to see about scheduling a classroom visit.