Educator Cheryl McCallum talks about one of her favorite SMILE outdoor activities, and how to make it work even if you don’t have “an outdoor space teeming with living things.”
These days, I work in a museum. But before that I was an “outdoor educator,” taking 5th graders on hikes through the East Texas Piney […]

I still remember when my sixth grade science teacher took us outside, gave us each a block of wood and a magnifying glass, and showed us how to harness the sun’s energy to burn our zodiac sign into wood.
Sure, the zodiac thing dates me (I’m a Cancer, an unfortunately named sign if there ever was […]

Since April 20, people around the world have watched as millions of gallons of oil spill into the Gulf of Mexico. We tune in to news accounts of oil-covered pelicans, tar balls on beaches, and underwater “plumes” that may be even more damaging that the oil washing up on our shorelines. An entire ecosystem, not […]