Youth Education Program

of San Francisco Botanical Garden Society

Guided Childrens Walks

Objectives for Leading Childrens Groups

As a childrens walk guide, you have the opportunity to help shape childrens awareness and appreciation of the natural world, allowing them to develop the positive, caring attitude that is necessary for deeper understanding to develop. While our walks do have varied specific themes and content, underlying them all are fundamental concepts and approaches. Following are primary objectives for leading any childrens walk in the garden, as developed by a group of SFBGS docents. 1. Encourage the joy of exploration and discovery. 2. Instill an appreciation of the natural world. 3. Develop skills in using the process of scientific inquiry, which we call nature detection. 4. Through appreciation and understanding of plants and animals, encourage the childrens sense of responsibility for the earth. 5. Introduce or include the basic ecological concepts of the plant as primary producer in the food chain, diversity and interrelatedness, and continual change by adaptation and evolution. 6. Focus on process and relationship rather than simply description or naming in our study of plants. 7. Help the children know they are integral parts of the natural world. 8. Help children become aware of botanical gardens as special places, often urban, where all this adventure and learning can happen. 9. Communicate our own enthusiasm, interest and pleasure in the world of living things.