WHAT IS ELF?
ELF = Environmental Learning for the Future
Environmental Learning for the Future is a volunteer-run, educational program, developed to promote an understanding and appreciation of the natural world and increase environmental literacy. We hope to encourage children’s curiosity and concern about the natural world and to provide hands-on experiences for learning. ELF encompasses four different year-long concepts: Cycles, Adaptations, Designs of Nature, and Earth and Sky.
Are you looking for a FUN, in-class volunteer opportunity with your kids? ELF is a completely volunteer-run, supplemental, hands-on science program.
Each classroom has 5, two-hour sessions throughout the year, and each session consists of interactive centers. That’s where you come in!
Parents run the interactive centers with small groups of students who rotate through the centers. You don’t need to commit to every session; even if you can only make one, your time is appreciated!
Time commitment includes the 2-hour session during the school day, and about 20 minutes of prep-time per session as you read over the center outline and watch short training videos.
Email with questions: mitchellelf@gmail.com
2026/2027 School Year: Designs in Nature
Unit One: Leaves and Cones
This unit focuses on leaves and cones. While leaves vary greatly in appearance and texture, they are all designed as food producers for trees. Cones are designed with structural layers of overlapping scales to hold and protect their trees and plants. ELF will be teaching identifying characteristics, playing games, distinguishing patterns, cone creations, and outdoor exploration.
Unit Two: Spiders and Webs
Spider webs are well designed to carry out their food-trapping function, as are the spiders that spin them. ELF will be teaching spider identification (w/ live specimens as well as photos and illustrations), sharing the wonders of web weaving and silk spinning, show how web-spinning spiders feel rather than see the prey caught in their webs, go on a spider scavenger hunt, and a spider craft.
Unit Three: Snowflakes and Tracks
In freezing temps, water may take on many forms, each with its own design and special beauty. Snowflakes are particularly beautiful geometric frozen crystals that vary in shape and design. Tracks and traces can provide insightful glimpses into the lives of animals whose actions are otherwise hidden from us. ELF will be teaching snowflake design, examine and identify tracks and traces of animals, learn how track patterns can help us identify animals that create them, and to invent a story and tell it with tracks.
Unit Four: Camouflage
Many creatures are shaped or colored to blend into their surroundings. These different designs of camouflage are critical to the survival of those animals. ELF will teaching the different types of camo used by animals and insects, showing how tricky it can be to see the outline of camouflaged objects, demonstrate how matching color is effective camouflage, constructing a creature that will be camouflaged for a specific habitat, and to think effectively about the impact of effective camouflage.
Unit Five: Honeybees
Honeybees are fascinating insects whose uniquely designed physical and social structures contribute to their survival and success. ELF will be teaching the structural designs of a bee’s body and beehive cells, how honey is made, compare human life with honeybee life, bee-havior, honey tasting and more!