Outdoor Education
Keystone students explore the natural world beyond campus through enriching field trips and outdoor education, fostering learning, teamwork, and lasting connections.
Keystone education extends outdoors
Exploring the natural world beyond the campus gates is an essential element of the Keystone experience. From kindergarten through Upper School, students travel to nearby and distant locations to learn lessons from nature and bond with their classmates. Lower School field trips are designed to enhance daily classroom instruction. Students attend plays, visit working farms, and sample the history of San Antonio and Austin. Middle School students travel overnight in pursuit of science, history and team challenges. Upper School students travel farther still, and undertake environmental study while enjoying nature’s mental health benefits.
When students finish their time at Keystone, they recount their outdoor education as the source of deepening connections with teachers and with each other, and providing memories that last a lifetime.
outdoor education highlights
Grade Level Trips
Students in kindergarten through third grade take one-day trips that showcase elements of the varied ecosystems in our own city. Destinations include Mitchell Lake Wetlands, Salado Creek Greenway, Phil Hardberger Park, and Friederich Park.
Fourth graders travel to the state park near Helotes to hike and explore as a class. Students have the option to camp overnight in tents.
Fifth graders travel to Camp Champions on Lake LBJ in Marble Falls. On a two-night stay, they learn more about the local microclimate, test themselves on a high ropes course, try to use historic-style farm equipment, pet farm animals, and spend an afternoon fishing on the lake.
Sixth graders travel to Nature’s Classroom Institute in New Ulm. Students spend two nights in cabins, and they participate in activities that promote teamwork, leadership, and camaraderie. The focus of this trip is the land, ecology, and environment of South Texas.
Seventh graders visit Mo-Ranch in Hunt, TX. There, in their three-night excursion, they explore the Guadalupe River on canoes, take in a lesson in water ecology, tackle high ropes courses, strengthen bonds with team building exercises, try their skill in archery, and learn more about this part of the Hill County.
Eighth graders travel to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, where they study the geology and ecology of the park. Students camp in tents for four nights, and they are responsible for helping cook meals and working in groups to complete camp chores and tasks.
This trip provides an opportunity for freshmen to bond with new classmates entering Upper School. Students study the Olympic ecosystem of the Pacific Northwest, study old growth forests, conduct water-based science measurements and testing and study the effect of dam removals on a salmon migration river.
Sophomores travel to the Tampa, Florida area for wetlands research, marine biology instruction, and other learning about a complex North American ecosystem. Side trips include canoeing and swimming with manatees at Crystal River.
Visits to Civil War battle sites, hikes in Shenandoah National Park and two days exploring DC museums and the Mall, supplement the American history and American literature aspects of the junior year curriculum. Planned excursions include the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the National Gallery of Art.
Seniors study the Yosemite National Park ecosystem under the themes of a sense of place, interconnections and stewardship. Students work with Nature Bridge instructors to explore the climate, geology, geography, plant life and animal life of Yosemite to grasp how and why it is changing.
