Nature Literacy & Outdoor Education Programs on Long Island

Nature literacy is the ability to notice, interpret, and relate to the living world with greater awareness and skill. It grows through experience: slowing down, asking better questions, using all of our senses, and beginning to understand how plants, animals, weather, soil, water, people, and place affect one another.

Forgotten Skillz offers nature literacy and outdoor education programs on Long Island for schools, libraries, museums, preserves, homeschool groups, scouts, private groups, families, and individual learners. Participants explore real landscapes, investigate natural materials, practice traditional skills, and consider how people throughout history have learned to meet their needs within the environments around them.

Those experiences do not always require a remote wilderness or a major nature preserve. Outdoor learning can happen in a neighborhood park, along a shoreline, behind a library, or directly on school grounds. Nature exists in our backyards and communities, and human beings remain part of it. Learning to recognize that relationship is one of the most important steps toward becoming more observant, capable, and responsible participants in the living world.

For a broader look at how we approach experiential education, read about what happens in a Forgotten Skillz workshop.

What Is Nature Literacy?

Nature literacy includes learning to identify plants, animals, habitats, and natural processes, although it does not begin or end with memorizing names. Someone can learn something meaningful about a tree before knowing whether it is a red maple, black birch, or sassafras. Identification becomes more useful when it grows from careful observation rather than simple recall.

The first step is learning to notice what is present. What shape are the leaves, and how are they arranged along the stem? Does the bark have a recognizable texture or scent? Is the plant growing in dry soil, beside water, along a sunny edge, or in recently disturbed ground? Are insects visiting it? Has an animal browsed it? Does it appear in the same condition throughout the year?

Questions like these turn an ordinary walk into an investigation. A participant may begin by noticing a leaf and soon find themselves thinking about sunlight, water, soil, animal behavior, human activity, and seasonal change.

As those observations accumulate, a landscape begins to reveal relationships. Tracks and feeding signs tell stories about animals that are no longer visible. A dense patch of one plant may indicate moisture, disturbance, shade, or changes in land use. A fallen branch can serve as habitat, fuel, building material, evidence of wind, and part of the cycle that returns nutrients to the soil.

Nature literacy also requires us to recognize ourselves within those systems. Human beings use resources, move species, alter water flow, create waste, restore habitat, manage landscapes, and pass knowledge between generations. We have a tremendous capacity to damage the natural systems around us, but we also have the ability to understand our effects and participate more thoughtfully.

The goal is to replace the vague idea of nature as something “over there” with a more accurate awareness of the living world around and within us.

Outdoor Education Programs & New York Learning Goals

Outdoor learning has particular value as New York schools work to provide students with more opportunities to investigate real phenomena, interpret evidence, solve problems, communicate ideas, and connect knowledge across subject areas.

The New York State P–12 Science Learning Standards (NYSSLS) organize science education around three interconnected dimensions: disciplinary knowledge, Science and Engineering Practices, and Crosscutting Concepts. These concepts include patterns, cause and effect, systems, structure and function, and stability and change.

Outdoor education programs that include hands-on nature study give students a place to use these ideas rather than only reading about them. They can observe a habitat, ask why particular species are present, collect evidence, compare conditions, map patterns, evaluate human effects, and explain how a system may be changing. The evidence is immediate, imperfect, and often still moving around them.

Outdoor education programs also create natural connections with the New York State Social Studies Framework. Historical technologies, land use, resource decisions, cultural practices, geography, and human relationships with the physical environment can all be explored through a shared field experience.

The New York State Portrait of a Graduate, formally adopted in 2025, adds a wider set of goals for student development, including critical thinking, communication, collaboration, creativity, reflection, and responsible decision-making. A well-designed outdoor program can support several of those abilities at once. Students may observe habitat, discuss human history, identify useful materials, test a shelter, record evidence, work through disagreements, and explain their decisions within a single experience.

Forgotten Skillz programs are adaptable rather than tied to one grade or curriculum sequence. They can reinforce a current science unit, contribute to a social studies or ELA connection, support project-based learning, integrate social-emotional learning (SEL), or provide a broader enrichment experience that gives classroom ideas a physical context.

Long Island Is a Year-Round Outdoor Classroom

Long Island contains shorelines, woodlands, wetlands, fields, suburban edges, school campuses, disturbed habitats, and small pockets of green woven throughout developed communities. Each landscape offers something worth studying, and none remains the same throughout the year.

Forgotten Skillz has conducted Miracle Mile Trail Studies at the Patchogue Preserve, Hedges Creek Park, Gardiner Park, Terrell River Park, Stillwell Woods Preserve, and previously at CEED. The same basic program produces a different experience at every location. It also changes each time we return.

A summer trail may offer berries, dense foliage, active insects, heat, humidity, and limited visibility into the woods. Autumn shifts our attention toward seeds, nuts, leaf color, animal preparation, and changing daylight. Winter exposes tree structure, tracks, wind, shelter, evergreen plants, and details that were hidden behind summer growth. Spring brings wet ground, emerging plants, migrating wildlife, insects, and rapid changes that can make the same location feel different from one week to the next.

Weather adds another layer. A walk in manageable rain may reveal stronger scents, moving water, saturated soil, altered animal activity, and sounds that are absent on a dry day. Participants experience a version of the landscape that many people hurry through or avoid altogether.

Formal parks and preserves offer access to larger and more varied environments, but meaningful outdoor education programs can also happen on familiar ground. A school fence line, drainage area, athletic field, garden edge, stand of trees, or neglected corner may contain evidence of succession, invasive plants, insects, animal movement, weather, soil conditions, and human impact.

Once people learn how to look, the closest places often prove far more interesting than expected.

What One Trail Can Teach Us

Our recent Miracle Mile Trail Study at Gardiner Park began with a simple invitation: slow down, experience the entire trail, and try to notice one or two things you had never recognized before.

That goal sounds modest, but it changes the way people move. A trail stops being a distance to complete and becomes a place to investigate. Participants begin looking under leaves, smelling crushed plant material, watching habitat edges, examining soil, and comparing what they notice with the observations of the people around them.

Wild raspberries and yellow wood sorrel gave us opportunities to discuss plant characteristics, habitat, seasonal food, and taste. Sassafras and spicebush added another sensory layer. Their distinctive scents helped participants understand that plant awareness involves more than sight. Texture, aroma, location, growth pattern, and season can all contribute to careful identification.

Under established safety protocols, participants were invited to sample small amounts of several positively identified plants. Tasting was always optional. Wild raspberries and wood sorrel quickly became favorites, while phragmites shoots received a considerably less enthusiastic response.

That reaction was part of the learning experience. A plant can be edible without being especially appealing, and a resource that mattered to people in another place or time may not suit modern expectations. Taste can open a conversation about season, preparation, abundance, scarcity, culture, and the ways people have learned to use whatever their environments provided.

Elsewhere along the trail, we discovered deposits of clay. A patch of exposed ground suddenly connected geology, water movement, human history, and technology. Why had clay accumulated there? What did it reveal about the soil? How might people have recognized its usefulness before modern material science? Clay has been shaped into vessels, structures, cooking surfaces, pigments, and countless practical objects. A resource beneath our feet became an entry point into several branches of human knowledge.

We also found invasive plants like mugwort and garlic mustard spreading through disturbed areas. Their presence helped participants read the effects of trails, construction, transported soil, repeated foot traffic, mowing, and other forms of human activity. An invasive plant is more than an item on an identification list. Its location can reveal something about what has happened to the landscape and how one change creates opportunities for another.

Along the way, people also formed new friendships. Shared discovery makes conversation easy. Someone points out a plant, asks a question, compares an observation, or laughs with the group after tasting an unpopular leaf. Nature provides common ground in both the literal and social senses.

That connection reflects an important part of the Forgotten Skillz mission. Learning about the outdoors also gives us another way to explore humanity: how people learn together, respond to challenges, share knowledge, and recognize how much they have in common.

Different Programs, One Shared Mission

Forgotten Skillz programs often overlap because they grow from the same three-part mission.

We learn about and help preserve ancient skills, cultures, and traditions. We explore missed or abandoned branches of the human skill tree, looking for ideas that can inspire more capable and sustainable modern lives without expecting people to recreate the past exactly. We also study humanity across time, place, and culture, recognizing that people have always been working with the knowledge and resources available to solve many of the same fundamental problems.

Each of our outdoor education programs approaches that mission from a different direction.

Miracle Mile Trail Studies

A Miracle Mile uses a short, fixed route for a concentrated study of place. Participants may investigate plant communities, animal signs, habitat edges, soil, weather, natural resources, seasonal patterns, sensory information, and human impact.

The route is intentionally manageable. Progress is measured through attention rather than distance. Because the landscape continues to change, the same trail can be studied repeatedly without offering the same experience twice.

Foraging may be part of a Miracle Mile, but it is one thread within a broader investigation. A berry, root, fiber plant, or medicinal species matters alongside tracks, clay, weather, water, insects, disturbance, and the stories of how people have interacted with the land.

Foraging & Plant Awareness

A dedicated foraging program places greater emphasis on close plant observation. Participants examine identifying characteristics, habitat, season, texture, scent, useful parts, possible lookalikes, and environmental concerns.

Plant knowledge also provides a direct path into cultural and historical learning. Communities around the world have relied on local plants for food, medicine, fibers, dyes, cordage, fuel, containers, structures, and tools. Learning about those uses can help participants understand human ingenuity while also developing caution, ethical judgment, and respect for the limits of their own knowledge.

Survival Basics

Survival Basics provides a practical framework for exploring decision-making, priorities, adaptability, resource use, and human relationships with the environment.

The survival scenario is the teaching medium. Shelter, water, fire, cordage, tools, and wayfinding reveal how technologies emerge from particular needs, materials, climates, and cultural traditions. They also lead to modern questions about preparedness, sustainability, cooperation, and the difference between possessing equipment and developing genuine competence.

A participant may learn how to prioritize shelter or make cordage, but the deeper lesson concerns how people think when circumstances change and how knowledge allows us to work more effectively with what is already around us.

Shelter-Building & Practical Challenges

Shelter-building turns environmental observation into action. Participants must consider weather, location, material availability, structure, insulation, water movement, time, and the needs of the group before they begin building.

The experience can draw from survival principles, engineering, historical construction methods, ecology, teamwork, and sustainability. Participants create something, test it, find weaknesses, and adjust their decisions. The completed structure provides a visible result, while the planning and cooperation behind it create much of the lasting value.

Outdoor Education Programs for Schools, Libraries, & Groups

Forgotten Skillz has delivered survival, outdoor, and nature-based programming at Sands Point Preserve, the Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum and Planetarium, Sachem Library, and CEED, as well as with homeschool groups throughout Long Island.

Most topics can be adapted for focused age- or grade-specific groups from grade two through adulthood. Each session is planned for its intended audience, with the content, tools, pacing, and level of challenge adjusted to suit participants’ developmental stage. Groups commonly range from approximately 10 to 25 people. Formats may be as brief as a single school period or extend into a multi-hour field experience.

Schools do not always need to arrange transportation to benefit from place-based learning. Their own grounds can become a field site for habitat observation, plant awareness, soil studies, mapping, human-impact investigations, and modified practical challenges. Some activities can also be moved indoors or divided into classroom and outdoor components.

Libraries, museums, recreation departments, scout groups, homeschool co-ops, microschools, clubs, families, and other private groups can arrange existing programs or request a customized experience. Programs are primarily offered across Long Island, while opportunities farther afield may be considered by request.

Learning Judgment Through Mindful Participation

One of the most valuable things participants can learn outdoors is how to make thoughtful decisions when the answer depends on the place, the conditions, and the people involved. Forgotten Skillz programs model that judgment openly. We examine what is possible, what is appropriate, and what responsibilities come with using natural materials, tools, fire, or wild plants. This process helps keep participants safe while ensuring that each activity remains consistent with the rules, expectations, and risk-management guidelines of the host organization.

Foraging offers a clear example. Participants learn to notice defining characteristics, compare possible lookalikes, consider where a plant is growing, and think about contamination, allergies, season, and site rules. Carefully selected plants may be offered for optional tasting, but the larger lesson is learning when we have enough knowledge to act and when it is wiser to leave something alone. Some locations allow limited collection, while others call for observation only. Both can produce a rich learning experience.

Fire and tools are approached in the same spirit. Depending on the age group, program goals, and host location, participants might build a carefully controlled fire, explore sparks with flint and steel, observe a demonstration, carve with an appropriate knife, or begin with a simpler tool such as a vegetable peeler. The goal is to develop real competence: understanding what a tool can do, using it with control, recognizing its limits, and choosing a better option when conditions call for one.

Night hikes provide another opportunity to practice awareness. Participants move along routes that have been planned and tested beforehand, using red lights that preserve night vision rather than flooding the trail with white light. The darkness encourages closer attention to sound, movement, terrain, and the ways our senses adjust when sight is no longer dominant.

Weather can become part of the lesson as well. A Miracle Mile in light rain may reveal stronger scents, moving water, softened soil, different animal activity, and an unfamiliar version of a familiar place. When conditions make travel or participation unsafe, the program can be modified, moved indoors, postponed, or rescheduled. Good judgment includes knowing when conditions offer something valuable and when they ask us to change course.

This approach reflects the Forgotten Skillz principle of mindful participation. We are part of nature, and our actions within it matter. Participants learn to collect ethically when permitted, limit unnecessary impact, avoid spreading invasive species, respect the rules of the site, and consider what their choices leave behind. By seeing adults model that care and reasoning, younger participants begin developing the same habits in their stewardship of the land.

Host or Attend an Outdoor Education Program

Schools, libraries, museums, parks, preserves, scout groups, and community organizations can explore the Forgotten Skillz workshop catalog or start a conversation about hosting a workshop. Programs can be shaped around the audience, available time, location, season, curriculum, and organizational requirements.

Homeschool groups, families, clubs, outdoor organizations, and other private groups can arrange an established program or discuss a customized experience built around their own interests and goals.

Adults, families, teens, and curious local learners can also browse upcoming Forgotten Skillz events for seasonal walks, field studies, foraging programs, survival experiences, and other hands-on opportunities.

Frequently Asked Questions About Outdoor Education Programs

What ages can participate in Forgotten Skillz outdoor education programs?

Most programs can be adapted for participants from grade two through adulthood. Activities involving knives, fire, night hiking, or more advanced physical challenges may have higher age requirements or additional supervision needs.

Can an outdoor education program take place on school or library grounds?

Yes. Schoolyards, library grounds, gardens, drainage areas, tree lines, fields, and other familiar spaces can support meaningful investigations. The program is designed around the features, limitations, and rules of the site.

Do participants need previous outdoor or survival experience?

Most programs are beginner-friendly and require no previous experience. Instruction, challenges, and expectations are adjusted to the age, abilities, confidence, and existing knowledge of the group.

What happens if it rains?

Many programs can continue during manageable rain, which may reveal different scents, sounds, animal activity, water movement, and soil conditions. Weather that creates unsafe travel, exposure, terrain, or air-quality conditions may require an indoor modification, postponement, or rain date.

Do foraging programs involve eating wild plants?

Some programs include optional tasting of carefully selected and positively identified plants. Tasting depends on the site, host rules, participant health concerns, and the judgment of everyone involved. Observation, identification, and ecological understanding remain valuable even when nothing is collected or tasted.

Keep Exploring with Forgotten Skillz

Interested in hands-on learning through nature, history, traditional skills, craft, stewardship, and human ingenuity? Follow Forgotten Skillz, explore our upcoming workshops and outings, and subscribe to the newsletter to keep the conversation going.

Michael A. Evans is the founder and lead educator of Forgotten Skillz and CEO of Synchronicity Coaching Inc., a multidisciplinary organization creating educational programs and experiential learning opportunities across Long Island and beyond.

Through Forgotten Skillz, Michael develops hands-on experiences that connect nature literacy, cultural history, traditional crafts, ancestral technologies, environmental stewardship, and practical outdoor skills. His programs invite participants to observe, question, experiment, make, and better understand how people across cultures and throughout history have interacted with the world around them.

Beyond Forgotten Skillz, Michael contributes to youth education as a creative collaborator on the Little Laurie Science Stories book series and the Ninja Née Science Education Program, helping create experiences that foster curiosity, creativity, scientific thinking, and a lasting enthusiasm for learning.