YMCA Point Bonita

Since 1990, YMCA Point Bonita has given students in grades K-12 the opportunity to experience learning in a holistic way. Living cooperatively at our coastal residential campus for two to five days, students and their teachers are guided by our outstanding naturalists on all-day hikes through the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Every program is tailored to the students and teachers we serve, each curriculum designed to re-enforce classroom learning.

We bring science to life!
Through pond studies, tide-pooling, animal sightings, plant walks, geology talks, and ecologically demonstrative games, the Outdoor Education Program transforms classroom concepts into real life experience. As students touch a sea anemone, look at magnified bugs, watch a bee pollinate a flower, hear the call of a red-wing blackbird, sample herbs in our organic garden, they are drawn into the miraculous nature of life. As theory becomes reality, they begin to care about our world.

We create community!
In addition to living, learning, and playing in the outdoors together, students are guided by our naturalists through team-building challenges that teach them vital communication and conflict resolution skills. Set up as physical and intellectual “puzzles” for students to solve, challenges teach students to listen as well as speak, to build off of each others’ ideas in an atmosphere of respect, and to realize that “success” is a larger concept than “completion".

We care for our land!
Community service projects protect the health of our National Park and empower students to make positive changes in their lives. As volunteer stewards of the land, students participate in beach clean-ups and habitat restoration projects in cooperation with the National Park Service. They experience first-hand how every contribution makes a difference.

We create environmental stewards!
By weaving a thread of choice and impact throughout each aspect of the Outdoor Education Program , we empower students to become Ambassadors of the Environment when they return home to their own communities.

To learn more, check out these links:
Outdoor Education Program Topics
Night Programs
Rates

Teacher Resources:
Teacher's Packet
Spanish Supplements to Teacher's Packet

To make a reservation for the Outdoor Education Program, contact Rochelle Tolbert at (415) 331-9622 x686.
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