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Schools offer a wide variety of adventure programs for children

This is an excerpt from Adventure Education: Theory and Applications by Dick Prouty,Jane Panicucci,Rufus Collinson.

By Steven Guthrie and Rita Yerkes

Kindergarten Through Grade 12

Schools offer a wide variety of adventure education programs. These include facilities-based Project Adventure–style offerings in kindergarten and physical education, adventure-based counseling, and academic offerings through outdoor or wilderness expedition trips.

Adventure playgrounds in parks and preschools are examples of kindergarten adventure education. For example, many Montessori schools feature adventure playgrounds where children can explore and discover through adventure play. In Europe, these playgrounds have been very popular with school-aged groups (Yerkes 1980; City of Berkeley 2004). As European children move into the older grade levels, they often experience adventure education at outdoor centers that contract with the school districts for this purpose. Many schools, particularly independent schools, have their own dedicated outdoor trip programs, staffed by either a professional outdoor leader or teachers with an interest in outdoor education.

In the United States, elementary students experience adventure programming in physical education, structured after-school programs, structured recess programs, and academic classrooms that use an adventure education paradigm. Often these programs use initiative games; low-element challenge courses; and, less frequently, belayed climbing walls and challenge courses. More advanced adventure programming happens in the middle school through high school years as the same range of academic and physical education offerings are given with greater intensity. Facilities-based programs are the rule, with challenge courses and climbing walls proliferating. There are Project Adventure–style physical education programs in all 50 states, with a growing volume of new programming occurring thanks to recent federal grants. Public schools in Milwaukee, for example, have a long-standing physical education adventure program.

Often students receive adventure programming at outdoor education centers or outdoor recreation centers that are used as peak experiences for academic classes or as club offerings. One example is the Outdoors Wisconsin Leadership Synergies program at George Williams College of Aurora University in Williams Bay, Wisconsin.

A number of high schools around the country, both public and private, especially in New England and the West, have wilderness experience programs. Although the AEE publishes a limited directory of these programs, it is safe to say that at least 500 programs exist.

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