Our typical school sessions are scheduled in 40-minute class rotations with approximately 5 minutes between groups for resetting materials.

We work within your school day and around important time constraints like drop-off, recess, lunch, and pick-up. For schools with multiple classes, we typically start early in the day to make sure every group has plenty of time to play.

For larger schools with more than 4 classes, you may want to split your visit across two or more days, depending on your schedule and teacher preference. If your classes are particularly small, we can sometimes combine groups depending on your total student numbers and available setup.

Yes! The Garden Museum is fully insured, and we can provide an ACORD Certificate of Insurance naming your district upon booking.

As a former classroom teacher, I understand the many moving pieces that go into planning a school experience. Once your field trip has been approved and you’ve selected your date(s), we can take it from there! We’ll work directly with your office and district staff to complete required paperwork, contracts, insurance documentation, and other vendor requirements.

Our goal is to make the behind-the-scenes process as easy as possible for teachers so you can focus on bringing a special day of play to your students!

We always advocate for an outdoor space—encouraging more outdoor play is an important part of our mission! A grassy field, lawn, garden, or other open outdoor area works beautifully and gives children plenty of room to spread out and explore.

Whenever possible, please choose a location with easy gate access or drive-up access so our team can efficiently unload and reload materials.

Our standard setup is designed for one class at a time, up to approximately 30 students. For larger groups, our expanded setup can accommodate up to 45 students, and our double setup can accommodate up to 60 students for a combined-class experience.

Whenever possible, we recommend smaller groups—not because we can’t accommodate more, but because a little extra space helps keep the play calm, joyful, and engaging for everyone!

No lesson prep or activity leading required!

The Garden Museum is designed around child-led, open-ended exploration. We’ll introduce the playspace and help students get started. Teachers and classroom staff remain with their students, helping with supervision, transitions, and supporting children as they explore, create, build, investigate, and play.

Because our playspaces are designed for outdoor play, we do not set up in rainy or potentially rainy weather. We keep a close eye on the forecast leading up to your visit and will stay in close communication with your team. If forecasted conditions make the session unsafe or impractical, we’ll work together to reschedule for a better day!

For on-campus visits, additional parent volunteers are not typically needed. Most of the schools we visit participate with their regular classroom staff (and occasionally a parent who was already scheduled to volunteer that day).

Our playspaces are intentionally designed for child-led, open-ended play—children don’t need extra help or direction to engage with the activities! Of course, you know your students best, so additional volunteers are always welcome if you’d prefer to have them.

If your Garden Museum visit is a walking field trip to a nearby park, we recommend bringing a few parent volunteers, just as you would for any other off-campus field trip.

We know enrichment funding can be especially limited for some school communities. At this time, we’re not able to offer reduced pricing for Title I schools, but we’re happy to help you explore community-sponsored funding for your visit.

Local businesses, service organizations, and companies are often eager to support enrichment opportunities for schools that could use additional funding. Reach out to us for a ready-to-share sponsorship packet that you can send to local businesses and community partners to help fund all or part of your Garden Museum visit.

Absolutely—invite your special education classes out to play, too! Our open-ended, sensory, imaginative, and exploratory stations naturally offer lots of different ways for students to engage at their own comfort level.

We find it often works best to offer these classes a flexible visiting window rather than a set rotation. Teachers and aides can bring students out in smaller groups throughout our setup time, allowing them to explore at a pace and group size that works best for their students.

Schools fund their visits in lots of different ways! Parent donations are often one of the easiest places to start, and many schools use a sliding-scale or suggested contribution so families can participate at a level that works for them. Families are often happy to help support a fun, meaningful enrichment experience for their little ones!

Visits are also commonly funded through PTO/PTA/PFC funds, school enrichment or instructional budgets, grants, or other site-based funding sources.

Need help getting started? We’re happy to provide clear pricing, program descriptions, and ready-to-share family or sponsorship materials to help make funding your visit easier.

www.thegardenmuseum.com/schoolfunding

Have a grant you’ve been eyeing but haven’t had time to tackle? Send it our way! As a former teacher with experience in grant writing, I’m happy to help with the program language, pricing, supporting details, or other information you need to make the application process a little easier.