for grades: all ages
Maple Sugar Tours
*Please Note: Maple Sugar Tours are available only during the sugaring season (February to late March)
Location: Outdoor Discovery Campus
Description: Learn how to identify a maple sugar tree, and discover why maple sugar trees are the most widely used species. Join an environmental educator as they describe how a tree is “Tapped” to collect the sap, and why the sap flows only in the late winter and early spring. Discover how the Native Americans and Colonists made maple syrup, and observe our modern techniques for collecting and boiling sap into delicious maple syrup. Students will have a chance to taste sap directly from the tree and to take our taste test challenge. This program content and approach can be modified to be age/grade appropriate.
For younger students or students who may need a more accessible path, there is our Maple Lane Tour. This tour brings you on a shorter and even path to our Sugar Maple Trees on a gravel road and our Sugar Shack, which is located closer to our main buildings.
For slightly older students, we have our Sugar Bush Hike. This hike will take you to the original maple sugar trail, back when this property was a farm. On this hike, students will explore the land and visit our other Sugar Shack in the woods.
Learning Objectives: In this program, students will learn about the history of Maple Sugaring, tree identification, tree tapping, sap collection, and syrup production. Students will learn these concepts through a hike and hands-on experiences. Students will understand how to take sap from a Sugar Maple tree without harming it, and how this has been done for hundreds of years.
NYS Core Curriculum Standards: (Can also be adapted for high school students)
Pre-K- Physical Sciences and Life Sciences: P-PS1-1, P-LS1-1, & P-LS1-2
K- Matter and Its Interactions and Interdependent Relationships in Ecosystems: Animals, Plants, and Their Environment: K-PS1-1, K-LS1-1, K-ESS2-2, K-ESS3-1, & K-ESS3-3
1st- Structure, Function, and Information Processing: 1-LS1-1
2nd- Structure and Properties of Matter, Interdependent Relationships in Ecosystems, & Processes that Shape the Earth: 2-PS1-1, 2-PS1-2, 2-PS1-4, 2-LS4-1, & 2-ESS2-3
3rd- Interdependent Relationships in Ecosystems: 3-LS2-1 & 3-LS4-4
4th- Structure, Function, and Information Processing: 4-LS1-1
5th- Structure and Properties of Matter, Matter and Energy in Organisms and Ecosystems, & Earth’s Systems: 5-PS1-2, 5-LS1-1, & 5-ESS3-1
field trip only (no in-school option)
Program Length:
60-90 minute hike, depending on grade level
Program Cost:
$250 for up to 25 students per class
Up 5 to chaperones max
Staff/adults are free
Location: Outdoor Discovery Campus (120 Muser Dr. Cornwall NY, 12518)