Why should children spend time at Shelly Ridge?
The Shelly Ridge environmental center provides the hands-on experience to which we relate our science program. Children experience the effect of the seasons on plants, insects, and animals. This outdoor site offers opportunities for exploration, observation, discovery, and reflection-ways for city children to internalize and value the outdoors. Environmental education, as a branch of science, provides concrete experiences and is less abstract than other areas of science. Children study what they know, such as air, water, soil, sun, animals, and plants. We hope that by beginning in this way, they will come to love science and will be encouraged to continue with more advanced science and mathematics courses in high school. At the same time, environmental education differs from study of traditional subdivisions of science. Aspects of environmental education range from the direct and deeply personal experience of nature to the profound social questions raised by the relationship between hu
