Outdoor Education at Bethelwoods
Our SiteBethelwoods Camp and Conference Center is located in the heart of York County and the Piedmont region of South Carolina. The 157-acre property is home to a 5-acre pond fed by multiple streams. The property is mainly dotted with hardwood trees and has a planted pine forest as well. The site has a large quantity of diverse flora and fauna, ranging from shaggy bark oaks and bloodroot to pileated woodpeckers and beavers.
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Why Does Outdoor ed Matter? |
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"Interaction with nature plays an important role in children's well-being and development. Research illustrates the positive effects outdoor education has on test scores, increased grade point average, measures of knowledge transfer, and childhood creativity."
-Project WILD “…God’s work in creation is too wonderful, too ancient, too beautiful, too good to be desecrated…Restoring creation is God’s own work in our time, in which God comes both to judge and to restore…” -PC(USA) Environmental Policy |
What we offer?
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Bethelwoods Camp and Conference Center offers day programs for groups during the week (8 a.m. to 4 p.m.) and on the weekends. Each session is two hours long and includes hands-on learning activities, games, and other learning material, including, but not limited to, worksheets, journaling, and assessments. Below are some of the areas we cover:
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If you have inquiries about how the Bethelwoods Outdoor Education program (BOE) can best suit your needs, please contact the Program Director, Parker Lucas, at [email protected]. Bookings are required at least one month in advance, and pre-visits are made by appointment only.
Stem Skills
Bethelwoods Outdoor Education (B.O.E.) aspires to promote different STEM skills for all participants. At their root, these skills are meant to support hands-on learning that encourages youth to be curious, carry out experiences of discovery and investigation, and gain new knowledge. Here are some of the skills we hope our participants learn (adopted from PLT's STEM Skills):
- Collaboration: cooperating with others, finding places of agreement, learning the importance of individual contribution
- Communication: sharing and exchanging ideas and results with group members, learning how to utilize different media for communication
- Creativity: looking at problems from different perspectives, exploring new ideas, learning and growing from failures
- Data Analysis: assessing the accuracy of information and data, presenting results in useful ways, identifying patterns in results and data
- Investigation: posing questions, carrying out and planning an investigation of the questions, crafting an explanation based on the results
- Leadership: leading projects and supporting team members, developing a project plan along with a timeline, making decisions backed by data
- Nature-Based Design: finding creativity and inspiration in and from nature, recognizing how nature solves problems, incorporating ideas from nature into problem-solving
- Organization: following instructions, procedures, or blueprints, recording data and analyzing it, keeping records of different quantitative and qualitative data
- Problem Solving: defining a problem, using different models and formula to investigate the problem, create a solution for the problem
B.O.E.'s Curriculum
Project Learning Tree (PLT)
PLT provides students with the awareness, appreciation, skills, and commitment to address environmental issues and enables students to apply scientific processes and higher-order thinking skills to resolve environmental problems. The lessons and activities are aimed at helping students acquire an appreciation for and tolerance of diverse viewpoints on environmental issues and develop attitudes and actions based on analysis and evaluation of the available information. The facilitators hope to encourage creativity, originality, and flexibility to resolve environmental problems and issues while inspiring and empowering students to become responsible, productive, and participatory members of society.
Each PLT activity displays explicit connections to practices and concepts mandated by the following national academic standards:
STEM Skills: PLT activities support STEM education by presenting real-world opportunities to apply science, technology, engineering, and math in problem-solving. Each activity identified STEM skills that students practice through direct experience.
Assessment: PLT provides authentic assessment opportunities for each activity. The activities suggest effective strategies for students to apply and demonstrate what they learned from the activity rather than simply state why they learned.
Check out the Project Learning Tree website here for more information.
Each PLT activity displays explicit connections to practices and concepts mandated by the following national academic standards:
- Next Generations Science Standards (NGSS)
- Common Core State Standards - English Language Arts (CCSS.ELA)
- Common Core State Standards - Mathematics (CCSS.MATH)
- College, Career, and Civic Life Framework for Social Studies (C3)
STEM Skills: PLT activities support STEM education by presenting real-world opportunities to apply science, technology, engineering, and math in problem-solving. Each activity identified STEM skills that students practice through direct experience.
Assessment: PLT provides authentic assessment opportunities for each activity. The activities suggest effective strategies for students to apply and demonstrate what they learned from the activity rather than simply state why they learned.
Check out the Project Learning Tree website here for more information.
Project WILD
Project WILD's mission is to provide wildlife-based conservation and environmental education that fosters responsible actions toward wildlife and related natural resources. All curriculum materials are backed by sound educational practices and theory, and represent the work of many professionals within the fields of education and natural resource management from across the country.
The Project WILD K-12 Curriculum & Activity Guide (WILD) is interdisciplinary, offering activities that focus on everything from mathematics to social studies, but Project WILD is especially relevant to science, specifically the K-12 science classroom. Most states have now adopted The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) or standards based on A Framework for K-12 Education. The foundations for both are the three dimensions of science: Disciplinary Core Ideas, Science and Engineering Practices, and Crosscutting Concepts. Project WILD provides phenomenon-based experiences and activities that are three-dimensional, supporting the standards teachers must work to help their students achieve. Now more than ever, Project WILD can be viewed as a tool to help teachers get students outside while engaging in standards-based teaching and learning. This document was developed in 2020 as a companion for Project WILD in order to highlight the three-dimensionality and phenomenon-based aspects of the 60+ science-focused activities.
Check out the Project WILD website here for more information.
The Project WILD K-12 Curriculum & Activity Guide (WILD) is interdisciplinary, offering activities that focus on everything from mathematics to social studies, but Project WILD is especially relevant to science, specifically the K-12 science classroom. Most states have now adopted The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) or standards based on A Framework for K-12 Education. The foundations for both are the three dimensions of science: Disciplinary Core Ideas, Science and Engineering Practices, and Crosscutting Concepts. Project WILD provides phenomenon-based experiences and activities that are three-dimensional, supporting the standards teachers must work to help their students achieve. Now more than ever, Project WILD can be viewed as a tool to help teachers get students outside while engaging in standards-based teaching and learning. This document was developed in 2020 as a companion for Project WILD in order to highlight the three-dimensionality and phenomenon-based aspects of the 60+ science-focused activities.
Check out the Project WILD website here for more information.
