Hikes & Field Trips

To read more about our outdoor nature program go to Teaching Through Nature.

Transportation and Field Trips Arrangements

When you sign your contract there is a field trip form for you to sign which gives permission for your child to leave Running River grounds. The field trip form that parents sign with the contract include all field trips taken. In addition to hiking, swimming and trips to the park, there will be special trips to places such as zoos, museums, libraries, etc. These trips are arranged directly with the parents in advance so that parents can attend.

Risk Management

At Running River, we spend a lot of time in the field hiking. In order to effectively prevent injury, we use Safety Briefings to orient students to new environments. It is important to create awareness around hazards. It is equally important to illicit ideas and rules from students in order to create a life long ability to assess and avoid risk.

We use safety briefings any time we enter a new environment, such as walking on a trail vs. walking on a bike path, or playing in a forest vs. playing near a river. In the risk management model we use, we define Environmental hazards and Human Hazards. Then, we create rules to separate the two in order to avoid incidents. Here is an example of an environmental briefing. This particular briefing might take place before playing in the foothills.

We gather all the children in a circle, make sure they are all listening by expecting complete quiet and asking for all eyes and all ears on us. We WAIT until this happens, asking children who aren’t doing this to please do, or move them next to a teacher to make it easier.

Then we ask the children to look around at the environment. What do they see that could cause injury? They answer. Then, what rules to do they need to follow to stay safe? Which of these rules are to protect us from the environment? Which hazards could cause injury from mistakes (human error)? What could people use to help them avoid problems? They answer until we feel like we have all the rules laid out clearly. Examples of these rules:

• Staying always in sight of a teacher/adult
• Not going off the trail during the hike
• No running with sticks
• No throwing anything from a high place
• In winter no going in the water
• If water is fast, there might be no going near the water
• And of course, the favorite rule: No kissing coyotes!