Update for 2023–24

Thank you for your interest! If you’ve already requested a program for the 2023–24 school year, we are currently processing your request and will notify you of your status by the end of the current school year.

To be added to our waitlist for any potential openings, please read about our offerings below, then complete our request form.

Request a Program

Partner with Shelburne Farms and bring your curriculum to life using food, farming, and the natural world. Together, we’ll engage your students in inquiry-based experiential learning with lasting positive impact.

 

Learning Opportunities

On our farm

Our 1,400-acre working farm and forest is a living classroom. Dive into the natural world, food systems, and agriculture. Typical program length is 2–4 hours, September–June, with all programming outdoors. $8/student, scholarships available.

From May–Oct., consider a self-guided visit to our Children’s Farmyard!

In your school or community

We’ll come to your schoolyard, garden, local natural area, or community for a program customized for your place. Offered September–June.

Collaborative support for teams and schools

We’re eager to work with schools and school districts to offer custom professional learning and build rich curricula over the span of a semester or school year.

Request information about professional learning collaborations.

 

Financial Support

We’re committed to making transformative learning experiences accessible to all. If you need financial support, contact us at school.programs@shelburnefarms.org

It's All Education for Sustainability

All of our programs are grounded in education for sustainability, an approach that links knowledge, inquiry, and action while cultivating a sense of joy and wonder for the world around us.

We know a sustainable future depends on healthy and just food and agricultural systems. These important ideas are woven through all of our school programs to strengthen farm to school connections and support youth in connecting the dots of where their food comes from and how their food choices impact their bodies, the environment, and their communities at large.

  • Programs support youth in connecting the dots of where their food comes from and how their food choices impact their bodies, the community, and the environment.

  • Enrich your farm to school connections by getting direct experience with where foods and fibers come from.

  • Get outside in any season to explore the Big Ideas of Sustainability alive on the Land.

  • Get hands-on with materials directly from the Land to collaboratively make food and other items.

Sample Programs

We use our farm campus, and the Big Ideas of Sustainability, to explore the natural world and connect students to where their food and fiber comes from. Sample school programs listed below can be adapted for grades K–8, September–June; PreK programs are also welcome to reach out via our request form.

Click on a program category to see more.

 

Agricultural and Food Systems programs

Enrich your farm to school connections by getting direct experience with where foods and fibers come from. We’ll make learning come to life by using hands-on activities to engage with these vital systems. Note that offerings vary depending on the season.
 

  • Farm to You: Students discover the key role farms play in our lives and the many gifts the Land provides. Get hands-on with materials directly from the Land – depending on the season, this could be veggies from the garden, cream from cows, flour from grain, beeswax from bees, or lanolin and wool from sheep – to collaboratively make food and other items (Fall and Early Winter).
     
  • Dairy: Explore a Vermont dairy farm. Visit our herd of Brown Swiss cows and see the milking parlor, feed alley, and even the manure pit! Milk a cow and learn about the roles cows play in our agriculture system (Fall and Spring). Educators interested in more in-depth dairy programming, sign up to access our digital Dairy in the Classroom resources.
     
  • Fiber and Sheep: Meet and interact with lambs and ewes while exploring the importance of wool through washing, drying, spinning, and carding (Fall and Spring).
     
  • Sugaring Time: Investigate the science and wonder behind maple sugaring. Follow the process from tapping to tasting. Students will engage in the full cycle of sugaring from tapping a sugar maple tree to gathering sap, and will visit the sugar maker in the sugar house (Late Winter and Early Spring).
Natural World Exploration programs

Get outside in any season to explore the Land. Forests and water are diverse, dynamic, and important parts of our ecosystems; what we discover will be emergent depending on place and time of year.
 

  • Forest Investigation: We’ll become nature detectives as we examine the changing landscape. Search for life in the forest – in trees, in the soil, and under logs (Fall and Spring).
     
  • Active in Winter: Investigate Shelburne Farms, your community, or your schoolyard for signs of active animals in winter. Examine the adaptations and strategies Vermont animals use to survive winter. Develop track identification and observational skills to become a winter wildlife detective (Winter).
     
  • Wetland Investigations: Follow the nutrient cycle in built and natural systems to discover the functions and characteristics of wetlands. Visit our dairy to consider how nutrients are imported and exported while evaluating the integral role wetlands play in maintaining a healthy ecosystem in a time of changing climate (Fall and Spring).
     
  • Pond Life Cycles & Adaptations: Explore pond and forest ecosystems. Experience seasons at the pond and in the forest by investigating insect and amphibian life cycles. Discover how creatures adapt to eating, moving, and surviving in their watery and forest-y worlds! (Fall and Spring.)