Register Now for our Summer Workshops & Institutes!
Patterns in Nature
Tuesday – Thursday, June 16-18
Jeffers Lodge, Prior Lake, MN
St Croix River
Monday – Wednesday, June 22-24
Taylors Falls, MN
Outdoor Classroom
Monday – Wednesday, July 13-15
Jeffers Lodge, Prior Lake, MN
Earth Science Outdoors
Monday – Wednesday, July 27-29
Jeffers Lodge, Prior Lake, MN
Summer Preschool
Friday, August 7
Jeffers Lodge, Prior Lake, MN
All of our workshops are customized for your school
Target Audience: In-Service K-12 Teachers (Elementary, Middle School, High School teaching staff)
Pre-Service Team Teaching: Students in teaching methods college classes
Participants receive: Jeffers Journal, Weatherguide Calendar, Teacher Lookit, Good Sense book, and a Tote Bag.
Team Teaching with Mother Nature
Team Teaching with Mother Nature for In-Service or Pre-Service Teachers.
Objectives for this workshop are to help educators:
- Increase observational skills
- Learn skills, strategies, and tools for successful teaching outdoors
- Use multidisciplinary journaling activities that provide “focus” for outdoor teaching
- Recognize your schoolyard as a teaching resource
- Identify lessons in your classroom curriculum that are best taught outdoors
- Identify state academic standards that can be attained by outdoor instruction
- Feel confident about outdoor instruction as a way to spark a student’s sense of wonder while increasing academic knowledge
- Incorporate phenology in daily lessons or morning meetings
- Have fun learning outdoors!
ELA - New!
ELA Outdoors Workshop
Workshop Objectives:
- Learn techniques to engage students in outdoor learning while managing outdoor classroom spaces and expectations.
- Provide context for ELA lessons by using natural spaces as a new, sensory-rich venue for instruction that positively impacts student behavior, participation, and achievement.
- Participate in grade-level lessons connected to multiple ELA benchmarks.
- Discover how the outdoors motivates students to write routinely for a broad variety of purposes.
- Connect books to problem-solving activities and local culture and history.
- Exchange ideas through stories, discussions, and learn how outdoor learning can extend conversations.
- Reflect on ELA curriculum and workshop experiences to plan for outdoor instruction in the days, weeks, and school year(s) following the workshop.
Workshop logistics and follow-up:
4 hours: including about 3 hours outdoors with direct experience on your school grounds.
Receive Jeffers Foundation teaching resources to use during the workshop and beyond.
Schedule additional/follow-up workshops to sustain outdoor teaching and learning for your teaching staff. Additional workshops that embed ELA and interdisciplinary instruction include: Team Teaching with Mother Nature, Phenology, Nature Journaling, and more.
Target Audience: K-12 teachers (Elementary, Middle School, High School teaching staff)
Participants receive: Jeffers Journal, Weatherguide Calendar, Teacher Lookit, Good Sense book, a Tote Bag, and a Class Set of Jeffers Journals.
Participating Teachers receive a Class Set of Jeffers Journals.
EcoTime 2.0
EcoTime 2.0 Workshop
- A themed-lesson format includes three types of lessons: Greeting, Science Activity, & Interdisciplinary
- Greetings build community and engage students in practices that develop an understanding of core ideas
- Science Activities promote investigation, analysis, and interpretation of data related to core ideas
- Interdisciplinary Lessons extend science instruction to include student research, designing solutions to engineering challenges, producing reports, building models, and more!
- Lessons enhance learning and engagement by connecting science to language arts, math, art, and engineering
Target Audience: K-12 teachers (Elementary, Middle School, High School teaching staff)
Participants receive: Jeffers Journal, Weatherguide Calendar, Teacher Lookit, EcoTime 2.0, Good Sense book, and a Tote Bag.
Target Audience: PreK teachers (teachers of 3 – 5 year olds)
Participants receive: Jeffers Journal, Weatherguide Calendar, Go Cards, Parents’ Guide, Foldable MN Nature Guide, and a Tote Bag.
Preschool Outdoors
Preschool Outdoors Workshop
Workshop objectives:
- Recognize your outdoor space as a setting for place-based, seasonal, and authentic nature play and learning experiences
- Focus on observational skills to use one’s senses alongside curiosity to safely explore nature
- Learn how to encourage student inquiry and to be co-learners as you explore nature
- Develop rituals and routines that provide for safe and engaging play and learning experiences
- Recognize how nature-based play and learning meet expectations of Minnesota’s Early Childhood Indicators of Progress
- Build a relationship with Jeffers as a partner to help you provide engaging nature-based experiences for your preschoolers
Calendar in the Classroom
Calendar in the Classroom Workshop
- Learn how to use the Calendar in the Classroom lessons in your classroom
- Get familiar with the five lesson themes: Astronomy, Gardening, Phenology, Water, & Weather
- Go over the information-packed Weatherguide Environment Calendar and Almanac
Target Audience: K-12 teachers (Elementary, Middle School, High School teaching staff)
Participants receive: Jeffers Journal, Weatherguide Calendar, Teacher Lookit, Good Sense Book, and a Tote Bag.