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An offering of Penn State

New for fall 2009!

Discovery Walk:
Discover the green—plants, that is—on a mystery tour

Group size: Fifty students maximum
Program length: A minimum of four hours at Shaver's Creek
Offered: April, May, September, and October
Ages: Children entering grades 1–6
Cost: $7 per student, plus an additional $7 for each adult exceeding the number of required chaperones

A chief inspector (a Shaver's Creek educator) will lead a group of detectives (your students) through the woods and provide a description of a "guilty plant." Along the way, the group will discover clues that will lead them to the culprit. Each detective will have a notebook in which to record clues and draw pictures of potential suspects. The clues will ultimately lead to the guilty plant—the same plant fitting the description that the chief inspector revealed to the detectives at the beginning of the mystery tour.

This program will help introduce children to the plant and fungi kingdoms. They will explore bracket fungi, lichens, mosses, ferns, vines, coniferous trees, and—finally—a deciduous tree. At each stop along the trail, the children will play a game or hear a story that will help them to remember the type of plant they have just discovered.

Many of the photographs included throughout the site are © Sven Zellner. For a listing, please contact us.
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The Pennsylvania State University | This page was last modified on Wednesday, June 24, 2009