School Programs
Now booking for Winter 2024-25!
For over 40 years, Mt Seymour has guided students to success in a positive, encouraging, and safe environment created by our certified instructors and experienced guides. We are dedicated to connecting children with their natural surroundings. Mt Seymour is the ideal classroom - offering clean mountain air, healthy activities, professional instruction, and lasting life skills.
We understand the challenges and effort involved in organizing a group of students. Our team is ready to assist you every step of the way, helping you prepare your school, engage your students, and reassure their families.
Contact Us
Interested in booking a school trip? Please email schools@mtseymour.ca.
Meal Program
Students choose from eight tasty menu items with gluten free and dairy free options available. A seating area in our cafeteria will be reserved for school groups that purchase the meal program.
Bus Rental
Two school buses are available for rent. Conveniently book your programs and transportation with us.
Curriculum Links
At Mt Seymour, we understand that the BC Schools Curriculum is evolving and changing, especially to include more experiential education and place-based learning. We’d love to help your classes make this transition! Below we have detailed some important linkages, both broad and specific, between our outdoor education programs and the proposed new curriculum. We focus on learning by doing and aim to help students experience the mountain environment using all of their senses, thereby laying a foundation for further growth and inquiry. It is our goal to spark an interest in your students that will assist them to express and reflect on a variety of experiences, perspectives and worldviews through place, with that place being Mt Seymour, the sub-alpine and British Columbia as a whole.
Core Curriculum Linkages
Critical and Creative Thinking
Many of our programs will get students thinking about the world around them and discovering out of the box links between nature and humans. We use the art of questioning to help students solve mysteries concerning Mt Seymour`s natural and cultural history.
Personal Awareness and Responsibility
Our Snowshoe Showdown program will get your students active and having fun! These programs aim to cultivate an enjoyment of outdoor recreation in the winter environment and teach students how they can stay active and healthy both on and off the mountain. Additionally, our Winter Survival Challenge programming will have students think about being responsible for themselves when enjoying the great outdoors and make them aware of steps to stay safe whether they are enjoying nature in the winter, summer or anything in between.
Social Responsibility
We are lucky enough to have our programs take place in a BC Provincial Park, and we take our responsibility to pass that information on very seriously! Your students will learn about our place in the mountain ecosystem and how they can help to protect it. This theme is recurrent in many of our programs, however Nature Games and Sustainability on Snow are particularly relevant. We feel that these programs will also help your students gain an understanding of contributing to community and caring for the environment.
Communication
We recognize that sometimes students need a gentle nudge to work together and learn more about each other. We have various activities, such as shelter building and solving complex challenges that will get your students excited about teamwork! Students showcase the skills they have learned throughout the day in a team setting, while The Snowshoe Snowdown has plenty of games, challenges and puzzles to keep your students entertained and working collaboratively.
Finally, students will experience and interpret the local environment through the help of our highly qualified guides! Our guides can help students to spot patterns and relationships in the mountain ecosystem, which may then be applied to their thought process back in the classroom. The Winter Discovery tour is a great introduction to get your students engaged and thinking about what they see, feel, smell, taste, hear and experience on the mountain.
Course Specific Linkages
Science K-9: Many of our programs discuss life cycles and features of living organisms as well as the interactions of plants and animals with their environment. Our curricula are particularly aligned with biology and earth science learning outcomes and can be made to suit any grade level. For younger groups we would suggest Winter Discovery or Nature Games to get students thinking about the plants and animals of Mount Seymour, how they interact and survive in the mountain ecosystem.
Social Studies K-9: All of our programs focus on the place-based education that is stressed in the evolving social studies curriculum, and some will be particularly helpful to classes interested in learning about what life was like on the mountain before roads and ski lifts, how people have interacted with the area over the years, and about local First Nations cultures.
Environmental Science and Human Geography 11-12: Sustainability on Snow is a great first step to get students thinking about how human activities change landscapes in a variety of ways. The program also aims to achieve the learning outcome that “healthy systems are resilient, interconnected and adapted ” by using nature`s own examples of sustainability. Students will also learn how humans have modelled many of our own technologies after the earth through processes of biomimicry. For students considering careers in the earth or environmental sciences field, we can offer a focus on an introduction to maps and bearings.
Physical Health Education K-12: All of our programs will have students out and about, experiencing the mountain on snowshoes or their own two feet. We make sure that educational stops are broken up with exploration and games to keep your class moving. Specifically, our Snowshoe Showdown program will help students “explore methods of monitoring and adjusting exertion levels in physical activity“ as well as gain an appreciation of outdoor recreation. Nature Games, Snowshoe Showdown and Winter Survivor Challenge will help younger students to “develop and demonstrate safety, fair play and leadership in physical activities“. We are in the business of teaching students to get excited about being outside and exploring the natural world, which is beneficial to the physical, emotional and mental health of all children.
Physical Geography and Earth Science 11-12: We delve into basic plate tectonics as well as how natural processes have shaped the landscape and contributed to human uses of it.