Recently, the seventh-grade students and their teachers spent the day at Jacobsburg State Park in Nazareth, Pennsylvania. The cool and sunny fall weather, magnificent landscape and beautiful changing leaves provided the perfect backdrop for the day’s activities.

Students participated in three curriculum-related workshops throughout the day. Each workshop was led by a Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources educator. In English class, students are keeping personal journals this year. At Jacobsburg, students learned about and practiced ‘Nature Journaling’ in one workshop. Jacobsburg’s history was the focus of the second workshop as students explored how the area was once important to the early rifle and ammunition industry in America and why the surrounding landscape has changed over time from woodlands to farmland and back to woodlands. Finally, in the third workshop, the Bushkill Creek was the perfect outdoor classroom to cap off the students’ ecology study in Science class. Everyone enjoyed wading into the creek to observe, catch and analyze the macroinvertebrate life.  

It was wonderful to spend the day together exploring this local state park!