Parents, teachers, grandparents, business leaders, and other community members are all welcome to volunteer or contribute to FRIES in their own special way. You can attend meetings, ask questions, and have your voice be heard. Our meetings are held the second Wednesday of every other month at 7:30pm in the Winthrop School cafeteria.
Getting involved with FRIES is a great way to meet teachers, staff, and other parents; to increase a sense of community among families; and to give support to the school. Read below to see why our officers and committee chairs got involved to see how you can make your own special contribution!
Dear FRIES,
I am writing to introduce myself, and Kestrel Educational Adventures. Kestrel is a small non profit offering outdoor, inquiry and project based science programs for all grade levels.
We are based in Hamilton, at the Patton Homestead.
All our programs support the state’s science standards while immersing kids in the natural world.
Our staff are experienced naturalists and child-centered educators.
We offer programs ranging from vernal pool studies to water quality monitoring, forest ecology, and wildlife camera trapping and tracking adventures.
Every program centers the students and their own observations and experiences, teaching them the core skills of field scientists, including asking questions, collecting data, and analyzing and sharing what they’ve found with peers.
We work with many local schools, some right on their campus or surrounding wild spaces, and some at our home base at the Patton Homestead (where we find rare frogs, turtles, and our cameras record otter and beaver and fisher activity regularly.) We are also raising some baby wood turtles for re-release later this year.
We’ve been working for the past two years with the Ipswich High School Earth and Space Science class, and we would love to work with one or more grade levels at the elementary schools too.
We have a program brochure that serves as a good starting point, but we do a lot of custom designing of programs according to requests from schools as well.
Please let me know if you would be interested in working with us.
Thanks!