Lincoln City Explorers Program: Trail Maps, Activity Booklet, and Activity Sheets
The “Lincoln City Nature Explorers” project is an environmental education and tourism project commissioned the Lincoln City Parks & Recreation Department in the coastal city of Lincoln City, Oregon made possible through the support of a K-12 Summer Learning Grant by the Oregon Community Foundation. This program is designed to provide access, learning, and connection to the parks and open spaces in Lincoln City.
For this multi-faceted project, we worked with a team at Lincoln City Parks & Recreation to create:
Seven different trail maps for the Open Space Trails in this coastal city
A "Nature Explorers" activity booklet that kids complete to earn a "junior ranger" style Nature Explorers badge
Activity sheets designed for use in park and summer camp programming.
Spanish Language versions of the maps
We worked with the team at Lincoln City Parks & Recreation to develop the seven different maps based on routes that they had selected for the program. Each of the maps also includes activities and information that we designed to support learning at the parks.
This process involved several scouting and research visits to the parks, content research and copywriting. You can access each of the maps as pdfs through the Lincoln City's Parks & Recreation page for the Nature Explorers program. (Maps are also available for free at their park office.)
The activity booklet is also a core part of the Nature Explorers Program. As families visit the seven different parks, children are invited to fill out at least five activities in the booklet and take a pledge with their parents to act as stewards of the parks. Once they fill out the booklet, they can bring it to the park office to receive a badge and prizes. Our part of the project included the content creation and design for all of the activities in this booklet, as well as the content and design for the activity sheets. As we developed this part of the project, we also considered how the booklet could complement the activities that we had designed for each of the maps.
Some of our goals for this booklet included:
Creating activities that are achievable for both younger and older children
Creating activities that can be used in any season
Creating a variety of activities that support different learning styles and interests, including identification and finding activities, sensory activities, imaginative learning, and drawing activities
Creating activities that could be used in any of the seven parks.