Self-Guided Tour Adventures

Grades: K-College
Days: Sunday-Saturday
Times: 9am-6pm
Duration: None
Cost: $5 per child
Number of Students: No class size limit

Plan your own adventure and give your students the key to the Gardens. Bok Tower Gardens is a great place for your students to enjoy their independence and explore safely. Experience excitement when students take charge of their learning in the classic and refined gardens.

Teachers, scouts, church groups, and colleges are welcome to bring students for self-guided visits. Our staff will orient the group, then the group is welcome to tour the Gardens at their own pace. Your Garden activities must be approved by the Education Manager prior to the tour.

Garden Adventure Guide

The Garden Adventure Guide is a printed activity guide available for all our young visitors. It includes a map to the rubbing tile posts and Gardens, as well as a Singing Tower jumble puzzle and other activities to deepen families’ and children’s engagement in the natural world. Garden Adventure Guides and rubbing paper for the tile posts may be requested by teachers when they book a Self-Guided Gardens Explorations field trip for their students, or are available at the Information Desk in the Visitor Center.

Available courses: options include Discovery and Nature Play | Insects Up Close | Math in the Gardens | Growing Writers | A Bird’s Life | Roots & Shoots | Building Character | Community Based Instruction | Splash! Grant Freshwater Education | Walking Through History

Grades: PK-1
Days: Tuesday-Friday
Times: 9am-4pm
Duration: 2 hours
Cost: $7 per child
Number of Students: 15 minimum

Bring your students to Hammock Hollow Children’s Garden where our educators will engage them in a variety of fun activities as they learn, explore, and create.

Hammock Hollow has fountains and a water pump, so your students will get wet if you let them!

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Bok Tower Gardens is home to a myriad of insect species; beautiful butterflies, busy bees, and lovely ladybugs, just to name a few. Insect lovers, and those who find them a bit icky, will have fun on this adventure, digging through compost, hunting for insects in their habitat, and learning about insect life cycles. Students will get to act out the relationship between insect pollinators and plants, and understand our dependence on insect pollinators for our food. Your students will also enjoy a sweet honey tasting of different Florida honeys or “eat like insects” while learning about insect mouth adaptations!

Standards:
Science: SC.2.E.6.2, SC.2.L.16.1, SC.2.L.17.1, SC.2.L.17.2, SC.3.L.14.1, SC.3.N.1.3, SC.3.N.3.2, SC.4.E.6.5, SC.4.L.16.1, SC.4.L.16.4, SC.4.L.17.2, SC.4.L.17.3, SC.4.N.1.6, SC.4.N.3.1, SC.5.L.14.2, SC.5.L.17.1
Math: MAFS.2.MD.4.10

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Math is everywhere at Bok Tower Gardens, from the large round head of a sunflower to the grand landscape design of Fredrick Law Olmsted, Jr. Your students will delight in the beauty of math as they work together to find and compare hidden shapes and patterns in nature, measure angles, perimeter, area, and volume, and find lines of symmetry in natural objects. They can even go inside a coordinate grid on our lawn and explore beginning fractions in our Outdoor Kitchen!

Standards:
Math: MAFS.2.G.1.1, MAFS.2.G.1.3, MAFS.2.MD.1.1, MAFS.2.NBT.2.6, MAFS.2.OA.3.3, MAFS.3.G.1.1, MAFS.3.G.1.2, MAFS.3.MD.3.6, MAFS.3.MD.4.8, MAFS.4.G.1.1, MAFS.4.G.1.3, MAFS.4.MD.1.3, MAFS.4.MD.3.6, MAFS.4.OA.3.5, MAFS.5.G.1.1, MAFS.5.G.1.2, MAFS.5.MD.3.4

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Use the beautiful natural setting of Bok Tower Gardens and the extraordinary story of Edward Bok to inspire your students’ writing! Students will use their five senses to experience salsa and chips, and then explore the gardens, collecting observations that will be fashioned into metaphors and similes, their own nature poem, and a unique perspective writing. Students will consider how they can “make you the world a bit better or more beautiful because you have lived in it”, as Edward Bok’s grandmother said to him.

Standards:
Language Arts: LAFS.4.L.1.2, LAFS.4.L.2.3, LAFS.4.L.3.5, LAFS.4.RL.1.2, LAFS.4.SL.2.4, LAFS.4.W.4.10, LAFS.5.L.1.2, LAFS.5.L.2.3, LAFS.5.L.3.5, LAFS.5.RL.1.2, LAFS.5.SL.2.4, LAFS.5.W.4.10

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Originally created as a bird sanctuary, Bok Tower Gardens is the perfect place to learn more about the lives of our feathered friends. Students will explore bird habitat, learn about basic bird needs, and play a game to discover bird adaptations or the role of birds in a food chain. Students will discover the birds that adorn the Singing Tower and connect the conservation challenges in Bok’s day with current issues. And hopefully, we will catch a glimpse of a few of our resident bird species!

Standards:
Science: SC.2.N.1.2, SC.2.N.1.5, SC.2.L.17.1, SC.2.L.17.2, SC.3.N.1.3, SC.3.N.1.6, SC.3.N.3.2, SC.3.L.15.1, SC.4.N.1.6, SC.4.N.3.1, SC.4.L.16.3, SC.4.L.17.3, SC.5.N.1.6, SC.5.L.14.2, SC.5.L.17.1

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What better place to learn about plants than a garden? Through hands-on activities and games, your students will discover what plants need to make their own food, experience the plant diversity in our Gardens, learn about the life cycle of a flowering plant, and understand how plants spread their seeds into the environment. There is even a stop in our Outdoor Kitchen to make the connection between different plant parts, their functions, and the food that we eat.

Standards:
Science: SC.2.L.16.1, SC.2.L.17.2, SC.3.L.14.1, SC.3.L.15.2, SC.3.L.17.2,SC.3.N.1.3, SC.4.L.16.1, SC.4.L.17.2, SC.4.L.17.3, SC.4.L.17.4, SC.4.N.1.6, SC.5.L.14.2, SC.5.L.17.1

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Students will learn teamwork, communication, and courtesy as they work together to solve challenges during this nature-based teambuilding program. Activities and cooperative games encourage everyone to work to get to know each other, appreciate the differences in people, create positive relationships, practice leadership skills, understand group dynamics, and laugh together. And, your students will learn how teamwork was crucial in building the Tower as they feed the koi.

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Bring your students to beautiful Bok Tower Gardens for their next community-based instruction field trip. Your students will learn firsthand from Bok Tower employees what it takes to keep the Gardens running smoothly, from the Café to the Gift Shop to the Visitor Center. Walking to the Singing Tower to feed the koi, viewing our short video about Bok Tower Gardens’ history, and visiting our museum is included in this adventure. We would love to be a part of your students’ community experiences!

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Bok Tower Gardens is an approved freshwater education field trip site for the Splash! Grant program administered by the Southwest Florida Water Management District. Your students will explore sources of freshwater in the Garden during a water walk, play a water cycle game, test water quality in our moat by the Singing Tower, and dip net in Pinewood Pond to learn about a pond ecosystem.

Standards:
Science: SC.2.L.17.1, SC.2.L.17.2, SC.2.P.8.4, SC.3.N.1.3, SC.3.N.3.2, SC.3.N.3.3, SC.3.P.9.1, SC.4.E.6.6, SC.4.N.1.6, SC.4.N.3.1, SC.5.E.7.1, SC.5.E.7.2

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Bok Tower Gardens is a National Historic Landmark with a rich history centered around Edward Bok and his creation of the Gardens and Singing Tower. This history will come alive as your students take a walk around the Gardens to explore the reasons immigrants come to this country, find examples of good citizenship and volunteerism, and explore the symbolism and meaning of the artwork on the Singing Tower. Students will get to touch samples of the different materials that make up the Singing Tower and share their family history.

Standards:
Social Studies: SS.2.A.2.5, SS.2.C.2.2, SS.2.C.2.4, SS.3.C.2.1, SS.3.G.1.3, SS.3.G.2.5, SS.4.A.1.1, SS.4.A.1.2, SS.4.A.6.3, SS.4.C.2.3, SS.4.E.1.1, SS.4.G.1.4, SS.5.A.1.1, SS.5.C.2.5

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What is the difference between an herb and a spice? Students will learn the answer as they explore our herb garden through touch and smell, and create their own herb and spice seasoning blends to try on freshly made air-popped popcorn in our Outdoor Kitchen. They will enjoy making a fragrant art project out of dried herbs and spices to take home, and will take a walk to the Singing Tower to feed the koi.

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• Natural Lands: marking and/or pulling out invasive plant species, collecting seeds, and garbage removal.
• Gardens: mulching plant beds and paths, and working in the raised beds in the Edible Garden.
• Greenhouse: weeding, washing pots, sweeping leaves, and potting plants.