Connecting with Nature

At BWS, grades classes make a number of school-day outings in Brooklyn and our surrounding New York City.  Corresponding to current lesson blocks, our local destinations include museums, geographical and historical landmarks, gardens and cultural centers.  Beginning in Grade 3, our students venture further afield, embarking on overnight trips.  This Waldorf tradition signals a transition point of burgeoning independence, and enables our students to embody a sense of greater maturity and responsibility with each passing year.  Grade 3 routinely travels to a working farm, which folds into their curricular theme of “living on the Earth”.  These trips reinforce a sense of natural rhythms and inspire an appreciation toward service, as students happily participate in the farm’s daily tasks.  Older grades typically revisit a farm or nature program to augment their broadening studies of the natural world, including botany in Grade 5 and geology in Grade 6.  These multi-day excursions provide precious opportunities for students to grow and stretch in harmony with one another, while exploring their inherent bonds to the natural world.

Overlooking vistas of Brooklyn and Manhattan, our beloved apiary and garden is tended year-round by beekeepers Jaime and Anjali with the enthusiastic support of students, faculty, and engaged families. The apiary hosts more than a dozen flourishing bee colonies with a population of over 200,000 honeybees. The surrounding garden supports a wide selection of herbs, fruits, and flowering plants - from mountain mint and anise hyssop to strawberry and red bud, and many more. 

As BWS Grade Schoolers approach science as a formal discipline, the apiary and garden offer an on-site primary source for studies in botany, biodiversity, and functioning ecosystems. Beginning in Fourth Grade, students travel to the rooftop routinely to observe the bustling colonies, supplementing their animal research projects and laying the groundwork for botanical and biological studies in Fifth Grade and Middle School. From time to time, our students may even get to sample the sweet product of the honeybees' tireless work. 

Models of efficiency and cooperation, our campus honeybees provide deeper reflections on social structure, labor, communication, and the balance between individuality and collective purpose - a bustling microcosm that mirrors the cooperation and resilience of our harmonious BWS community.