Our School Programs & Activities

Footprint Earth Foundation encourages all schools to incorporate learning that enables children to learn about their natural environment. Studies have shown that children who get outdoors, learning and playing are happier and test higher on standardized tests. Work with us to get our kids away from the screens and look at what's around them.

Our programs and activities are FREE to any school in the Twin Cities Metropolitan area. We provide instructor lead STEM based activities that grow children's knowledge and imaginations. Contact Us or call (855) 967-6358 for information on how we can be a part of your school program.

Activities include learning about composting from creating their own composting experiment to composting school waste and using the compost to grow a school garden. They can learn about solar energy by building a solar car and then challenging their friends to an all school race.

Here are some ways nature helps our kids.

• It builds confidence. The way that kids play in nature has a lot less structure than most types of indoor play. There are infinite ways to interact with outdoor environments, from the backyard to the park to the local hiking trail or lake, and letting your child choose how he treats nature means he has the power to control his own actions.
• It promotes creativity and imagination. This unstructured style of play also allows kids to interact meaningfully with their surroundings. They can think more freely, design their own activities, and approach the world in inventive ways.
• It teaches responsibility. Living things die if mistreated or not taken care of properly, and entrusting a child to take care of the living parts of their environment means they’ll learn what happens when they forget to water a plant, or pull a flower out by its roots.
• It provides different stimulation. Nature may seem less stimulating than your son’s violent video game, but in reality, it activates more senses—you can see, hear, smell, and touch outdoor environments. “As the young spend less and less of their lives in natural surroundings, their senses narrow,” Louv warns, “and this reduces the richness of human experience.”
• It gets kids moving. Most ways of interacting with nature involve more exercise than sitting on the couch. Your kid doesn’t have to be joining the local soccer team or riding a bike through the park—even a walk will get her blood pumping. Not only is exercise good for kids’ bodies, but it seems to make them more focused, which is especially beneficial for kids with ADHD.
• It makes them think. Louv says that nature creates a unique sense of wonder for kids that no other environment can provide. The phenomena that occur naturally in backyards and parks everyday make kids ask questions about the earth and the life that it supports.
• It reduces stress and fatigue. According to the Attention Restoration Theory, urban environments require what’s called directed attention, which forces us to ignore distractions and exhausts our brains. In natural environments, we practice an effortless type of attention known as soft fascination that creates feelings of pleasure, not fatigue.

Our programs and activities are FREE to any school in the Twin Cities Metropolitan area. We provide instructor lead STEM based activities that grow children's knowledge and imaginations.

Announcing our newest Partnership!

We are proud to announce a new partnership with Grove Elementary in the Marine School District in St. Croix, Minnesota.

 

Through this partnership, we will be introducing elementary school students to “commonsense sustainability” solutions that students and their families can incorporate into their daily lives to be good stewards of our environment.  Students will take part in learning activities that teach them the benefits of being sustainable.

 

On the road to being the first Nature Immersion School in the United States with a goal to be Carbon Neutral in 3 years!

Help is needed now to purchase:

 Automatic Faucets

Programmable Thermostats

LED Lightbulbs (to replace CFL and incandescent)