Grade: Middle School (6th - 8th)

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15 Jan 2025

Nature Escape Room

August 2025-June 2026

Students will work together as a team to sharpen their observation skills and solve escape room style puzzles all while engaging in hands-on nature exploration. In this outdoor simulation, we need the help of your students to protect the biodiversity of our land and save Greenacres from the dreaded Deforester!  (at Spooky Hollow Farm site only)

Ohio Science Standards:

  • SIPA Grade 6-8: Apply knowledge of science content to real-world challenges.
  • SWK Grade 6-8: Science is a continual process and the body of scientific knowledge continues to grow and change.

NGSS Standards:

  • MS-ESS3-3. Apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment
  • MS-PS1-2. Analyze and interpret data on the properties of substances before and after the substances interact to determine if a chemical reaction has occurred.

Vocabulary: Biodiversity, awareness, observation, neutralize

02 Feb 2024

Customizable Middle School Arts Program

August-June

Do your students have a strong sense of creativity? A passion for certain types of art or performing? Do you want to give them the chance to discover something new through interdisciplinary studies? Our Arts Educators can customize programs and activities into a personalized program that can excite students’ interests.

19 Dec 2023

Genetics on the Farm

August-June

Through competition, nature passes the strongest traits onto the next generation. Using nature as a guide, see how our farmers use the same concept to improve our herds and gardens for production and taste!

Ohio Science Standards:

  • 8.LS.1 Diversity of species, a result of variation of traits, occurs through the process of evolution and extinction over many generations. The fossil records provide evidence that changes have occurred in number and types of species.
  • 8.LS.2 Every organism alive today comes from a long line of ancestors who reproduced successfully every generation.
  • 8.LS.3 The characteristics of an organism are a result of inherited traits received from parent(s).

Indiana and NGSS Standards:

  • MS-LS1-1. Conduct an investigation to provide evidence that living things are made of cells; either one cell or many different numbers and types of cells.
  • MS-LS1-2.Develop and use a model to describe the function of a cell as a whole and ways the parts of cells contribute to the function.
  • MS-LS1-4 From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes. Use argument based on empirical evidence and scientific reasoning to support an explanation for how characteristic animal behaviors and specialized plant structures affect the probability of successful reproduction of animals and plants respectively.
  • MS-LS1-5 From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence for how environmental and genetic factors influence the growth of organisms.
  • MS-LS4-5. Gather and synthesize information about technologies that have changed the way humans influence the inheritance of desired traits in organisms.

Ohio Social Studies Standards:

  • Economics – Economic Decision Making and Skills: Choices made by individuals, businesses and governments have both present and future consequences.

Vocabulary:

genetics, breeds, natural selection, genetic traits, adaptations, farming, livestock, crops

13 Dec 2023

Inquiry on the Farm (Grades 4+)

December – February

 Scientific inquiry is a way of doing science that includes making observations, forming hypotheses, designing studies, collecting data, and drawing conclusions. While spending time in the greenhouse and other growing spaces, even in winter, students will design and conduct a simple investigation to learn about farming through the inquiry process.

Ohio Science Standards:

  • SIPA Grade 3-5: Observe and ask questions about the world that can be answered through scientific investigations.
  • SWK Grade 3-5: Science is a way of knowing about the world around us based on evidence from experimentation and observations. 
  • SWK Grade 6-8: Science is a way of knowing about the world around us based on evidence from experimentation and observations.
  • SWK Grade 6-8: Science is a continual process and the body of scientific knowledge continues to grow and change.

Indiana and NGSS Standards:

  • 3-LS4-3 Construct an argument with evidence that in a particular habitat some organisms can survive well, some survive less well, and some cannot survive at all. 
  • 4-PS3-2.Make observations to provide evidence that energy can be transferred from place to place by sound, light, heat, and electric currents.
  • 5-ESS3-1 Obtain and combine information about ways individual communities use science ideas to protect the Earth’s resources and environment.
  • 5-PS3-1:Use models to describe that energy in animals’ food (used for body repair, growth, motion, and to maintain body warmth) was once energy from the sun.
  • 5-ESS3-1 Obtain and combine information about ways individual communities use science ideas to protect the Earth’s resources and environment.
  • MS – LS2-1. Analyze and interpret data to provide evidence for the effects of resource availability on organisms and populations of organisms in an ecosystem.
  • MS-PS3-3. Apply scientific principles to design, construct, and test a device that either minimizes or maximizes thermal energy transfer.  

Social Studies Standards (K-8):

  • Geography – Spatial Thinking and Skills: Spatial thinking examines the relationships among people, places and environments by mapping and graphing geographic data. Geographic data are compiled, organized, stored and made visible using traditional and geospatial technologies. Students need to be able to access, read, interpret and create maps and other geographic representations as tools of analysis.
  • Government – Civic Participation and Skills: Civic participation embraces the ideal that an individual actively engages in his or her community, state or nation for the common good. Students need to practice effective communication skills including negotiation, compromise and collaboration. Skills in accessing and analyzing information are essential for citizens in a democracy.
  • Economics – Economic Decision Making and Skills: Effective economic decision making requires students to be able to reason logically about key economic issues that affect their lives as consumers, producers, savers, investors and citizens. Economic decision-making and skills engage students in the practice of analyzing costs and benefits, collecting and organizing economic evidence and proposing alternatives to economic problems.

Vocabulary: Observation, Investigation, Comparative Question, Data, Analysis

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