Field Trips to the Guadalupe River Park & Gardens

The Guadalupe River Park & Gardens is a natural oasis in the middle of downtown San Jose that connects nature with science, history, art and recreation. The perfect destination for a field trip. Field trip destinations can be scheduled at most any area within Guadalupe River Park & Gardens or can include an educational tour along any or all of the sections.

Several different activities can be combined to make a customized field trip for your group. Many of the possible activities are listed below along with a chart that shows the California State Educational Standards that are met for each activity. These activities are the foundation for your field trip plan, but they can be modified to better suit the needs of your group.

Field trips are appropriate for any group! Home school groups, pre-schools, after-school programs, schools, scout groups and play groups are all welcome and encouraged to participate. Activities can be geared for older or younger students as needed. For high school groups (or other groups who are interested in more intense explorations), we usually prefer to have a series of field trips to adequately explore several aspects of the river that may include soil testing, river clean-ups, river water testing using both chemical tests and macro invertebrate testing.

The general cost for the field trips are $7.00 per child. Transportation is not included.

If you are interested in booking a field trip, please follow these simple steps:

1. Review the possible field trip opportunities available to your group.

First Grade Program, (145 KB .pdf file)
Second Grade Program, (121 KB .pdf file)
Third Grade Program, (145 KB .pdf file)
Fourth Grade Program, (1.7 MB .pdf file)
Fifth Grade Program, (1.2 MB .pdf file)
Nature Navigators (4th and 5th graders) (.7 MB .pdf file)

If you don't have Adobe Acrobat, you can download it for free!

2. Contact us at education@grpg.org or 408-298-7657 to plan and schedule your field trip.

3. Schedule transportation.

4. Receive your confirmation letter from the education staff for the field trip which will include times and activities.

Environmental Education Curriculum

developed by the Friends of Guadalupe River Park & Gardens
through generous grants from Applied Materials, the City of San Jose Environmental Services Department, and the Yahoo! Employee Foundation

These activities are available from our curriculum to compliment your trip. Some are already woven into our field trips, but if one sounds interesting to you and your group, please ask and we can see if it can be worked into your visit.

Revised curriculum: Summer 2006

Includes the following lessons, and much more:

The Worm Cycle
Look & See Hunt
EnviroScape©
Just a Drop of Water
Oil + Water = Pollution
Historic Orchard
History/Archaeology Lesson
How The Water Got Dirty
River Walk
The River Rock Game
Leaf Print Animals
Stop to Smell the Roses
Habitat Hunt
Composting in a Nutshell
Topographical Maps/Knuckle Mountain
The Life Box
Paper Bag Watershed
Orchard Games
That Makes Apple Sense
This Land is your Land
Flour is Ground-up Grass Seed?
Weather Happens Everyday!
This Little Apple Went to Market!
Macro Invertebrate Search and River Water Testing
Drippy the Water Drop and the Water Cycle

For your convenience, we have created two versions of the curriculum in .pdf format. The larger version is print quality, the smaller version is for on-screen viewing only. You can print the smaller version if you want, but the reduced quality will show...

Large Version (26.8 MB, .pdf file)
Small Version (1.6 MB, .pdf file)

If you don't have Adobe Acrobat, you can download it for free!

California State Standards

The following are .pdf files.

Kindergarten
1st Grade
2nd Grade
3rd Grade
4th Grade
5th Grade
All of them together