ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES
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Treasure Coast Education
helping the environment.” Students from private
schools usually visit the center when county
students are taking FCAT tests or have been dismissed
early.
PROGRAM CONTINUITY
“I’ve been bringing kindergarten children here
for 35 years,” says Pinewood teacher Maurine
Prokop. “The paint changes and they get some
new things, but the overall program stays the
same. The kids all want to come here. Some kids
beg their parents to bring them here on Saturdays.
It’s hands-on. No one tells them ‘Don’t touch.’ ”
Art is an integral part of the center’s curriculum
and the walls are a visual candy store with
colorful murals of various seascapes and underwater
vistas.
The program is an extremely organized effort
with no student returning the next year to a rerun
of the previous year’s activities.
Kindergarten children focus on land and sea
turtles, their different habitats and endangerment
while first-graders study manatees and other
mammals, including man’s effect on them.
Second-graders learn about birds, food chains
and animals’ adaptations to survive in their
environment. Third-grade students use seine nets
in the saltwater grass flats of the Indian River
Lagoon. Fourth-graders visit the mangrove communities
in the river in search of the plants and Students from Anne Taylor’s Pinewood Elementary first-grade class work together from
>> a box of bones to piece together the skeleton of the deceased manatee.