It was our honor and delight to bring joy to so many people attending the Lexington Christmas parade with our entry, “Winter Windsong.” What’s the secret for building such an enchanting parade floats? A dash of creativity, a sprinkle of ingenuity, and a whole HEAP of help from our community.
Raw Learning
Children who attend local public school enjoy years of Boxerwood programming, but what about homeschoolers? This fall we’ve found a way to connect with these learners too, thanks to a new partnership with an area homeschooling cooperative, Raw Learning. The parent-led group, called Raw Learning, coordinates enrichment opportunities for homeschoolers in Rockbridge and adjacent counties. It is one of several …
Arizona Adventure
It’s not every day we get to send a Boxerwood educator to a national conference all expenses paid.Thanks to travel-specific funding from US NOAA/B-WET, our colleague Ginny Johnson attended the annual North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE) Conference in Tucson, Arizona last month. It was Ginny’s first immersion in the larger environmental education world, and as we expected it …
Dear Boxerwood Teachers
We’re fortunate to receive a lot of thank-you drawings, letters, and cards from children. Here’s a recent sampler in their own words (and emergent spellings). I had so much fun at Boxerwood. I loved that we had to test water. We had to shake viles of water which was fun! The last thing I did was a fun game about …
Birding at Boxerwood
Photos courtesy of bird walk participant, Baron Schwartz. Seventeen birders ages 11 to 93 spent the past Saturday morning meandering through Boxerwood’s woods and fields. Together they spotted around 30 bird species including Red-tailed Hawks, four kinds of woodpeckers, and more robins than they could count. The outing was the first in a new series of monthly walks led by members of the …
Feed the birds
After a year’s hiatus due to covid and supply issues, organizer Bonnie Bernstein is glad the annual sale is back on. “If you feed birds through the winter, this is your chance to stock up on premium seed and suet. We hope those of you who had been ordering the bulk of your seed from our fundraiser will plan to …
We blazed a trail
Just before the pandemic Boxerwood won a $80,000 federal grant to promote outdoor learning for underserved youth in afterschool settings. One of only 29 sites selected nationwide, Boxerwood proposed a model that connected students to science through high-interest outdoor recreation like kayaking and fishing. The project is now complete and the results are in. The big take-away is … it …
Green Career expo hits home run
The secret to an awesome expo for teens is pretty simple: all-in teachers, enthusiastic presenters, oversize chainsaws, speed dating, and squeeze cows (more about that later).During our second annual expo 200 students from RCPS and PMHS science classes yakked it up with 28 presenters representing fields as varied as solar energy, wildfire fighting, eco-therapy, materials engineering, green design, and landscape …
Bay Trip 2022
When was the last time you slapped a wave, kissed a fish, set a crab pot, and crawled through a marsh–all within 72 hours? This fall we resumed a signature program that introduces middle schoolers to the wondrous place to which all our rivers flow. Four Boxerwood educators and 18 youths recently spent 3-days and 2-nights on tiny Smith Island …
Calling all pumpkins
That’s the number of children we look forward to seeing this fall, based on school bookings so far. Some kids we’ll see once, some twice, some many times depending whether they’re part of a day program, an afterschool program, or a family event.