Each year our talented staff members and volunteers have the joy of working with more than 5,000 children from area schools. Our hands-on and active programs keep students involved from beginning to end.
Our property is 102 acres and has gently rolling pastures, coniferous and deciduous woodlands, a marsh, a pond, and streams. We have such diverse resources as 19th-century barns, a maple syrup shed, several telescopes, an astronomy classroom, and an authentically recreated encampment with a barked wigwam and a thatched longhouse. Our pastures and barns are home to a very engaging bevy of beasts- cows, sheep, a flock of chickens and proud roosters, and two pigs in the warmer summer months. Our best resource, however, is our enthusiastic and experienced staff; they pay special attention to details that make our programs unique and very keyed into children’s learning abilities.
On farms across the land, fall and winter were wonderful times to turn sheep’s fleece into yarn for knitting and weaving. Our flock of Romney sheep will be featured guests in this program. Your students will meet our sheep and lambs, feel their insulating fleece, and then take previously shorn fleece through the steps required to make it usable fiber. They will wash the fleece, hand-card (comb) it, and hand-spin it into yarn with a partner.
This popular program provides a look into an important Native American culture that inhabited the eastern woodlands for centuries. Classes will hike to our encampment, comprised of a thatched longhouse, barked wigwam, and activity areas. They will learn about the daily activities of the Connecticut Indians, including the important roles played by all family members, home life, cooking, and the use of ceramics. We will point out plants that were gathered for food, medicine, and even tools. We will also try our best to “stalk” quietly, like skilled Indian hunters. We will also discuss how women crafted clothing from animal skins, and the importance of the seeds, nuts, and berries gathered by children through spring, summer, and fall.
.This exciting hands-on program gives students a chance to explore and compare woodland, pasture, and stream habitats. Young explorers will learn how each habitat functions as a community, and how plants and animals rely on each other for survival.They will learn about food chains and natural recycling. In the woodlands, we’ll overturn rotting logs and discover the community of insects, arachnids and other arthropods that make their homes there.
We are fortunate to have a stream, pond, and marsh on our beautiful property. Each of these habitats is unique, and teams with aquatic plants and animals.
Using fine-net strainers, students will catch a variety of life forms, ranging from dragonfly and damselfly nymphs, water boatmen, larval salamanders and tadpoles in the marsh, to crayfish, hellgrammites, water pennies, and minnows in the stream.
As our buckets begin to fill with an assortment of creeping, crawling, and swimming creatures, students will learn about the adaptations and survival strategies that enable the plants and animals to live in their respective habitats.
Our maple syruping program is an ideal way to counter late-winter blues. Students will be a part of the reawakening of the woodlands as the sap begins to rise in the sugar maples. By participating in the tapping, collecting, and boiling down of the maple sap in our evaporator, they will learn valuable lessons in tree identification and the life cycles of deciduous trees.
One of our most popular offerings is our spring farm program. In this fast-paced world, it is increasingly important for children to understand the importance of food production and how it is tied to farms. Far too often, when we ask our students where food comes from, they reply, “The grocery store!”
Our honeybees are a wonderful part of the program. Through photos, props, and an indoor observation hive, the children will learn the vital role these insects play on the farm in pollinating our trees, shrubs, flowers and, of course, making delicious honey.
Everyone will taste honey made by our own bees and make a beeswax candle to bring home.
A close up look at claws, talons, beaks, eyes, ears, noses, and more! Live and mounted specimens will help students to understand why animals look and behave the way they do.
This interactive new program provides an excellent opportunity to enhance the Adaptations science units found in grade 1 and in grade 3. Utilizing a scaffolding pattern along grade levels, our engaging staff members offer an exciting range of appropriate activities to both grade levels.
101 Marchant Rd West, Redding, CT 06896
Phone: (203) 938-2117
Email: info@newpondfarm.org
Learning Center Hours: 9 AM-5 PM
Dairy Annex Hours: 7 AM – 7 PM
© 2025 New Pond Farm Education Center, All Rights Reserved. Website by Social Graces Communications.
An Avian Success Story: In the early 1900s European Starlings and English Sparrows were introduced into the northeast. For decades, these aggressive cavity nesters out-competed the more docile bluebirds for nest sites, so their populations were in serious decline. Environmental groups and individuals came to the rescue. Wooden nesting boxes were installed throughout the area and thankfully the Bluebirds proved to be quite adaptable, successfully raising their families in these new homes.
As you walk through our lower pastures and wildflower meadow, you may be fortunate enough to see bluebirds sitting on our nesting boxes. The males have brilliant blue plumage on their wings and back, a rusty colored breast and sides, and white undersides. The wings and back of the females are a more subtle grayish blue.
Once you learn the warbling vocalizations of these members of the thrush family, you will hear them frequently throughout your walk.
In addition to the many insects that make up their summer diet, our bluebirds feast on the berries of native shrubs throughout the fall and winter. We have planted stands of native winterberries (Ilex verticillate) and flowering dogwoods (Cornus florida) to add to our native staghorn sumacs (Rhus typina), and elderberries (Sambucus nigra).
Another bird that DEEP considers a species of special concern is the Purple Martin. Once commonly seen flying over open agricultural lands across the State, these aerial acrobats have been in decline for decades due to lack of open fields and pastures, lack of suitable nesting sites, and competition from aggressive non-native European starlings and house sparrows
For several decades, conservation efforts have been in place across the State to bring back the Purple Martins, and efforts are paying off! Arrangements of specially-sized, artificial hollow gourds have been hung from tall poles in appropriate habitats. Groups like the CT Audubon Society have well established banding programs, and DEEP reports that the Martin populations are on the rise.
New Pond Farm’s pastures seem like a perfect habitat, so during the nesting season, we too have positioned an arrangement of hanging gourds near the white fenceline along the pasture. If you venture over here during the early morning hours in the spring, you may hear the loop of pre-recorded twittering calls that we play in an attempt to attract any migrants. So far, we have just attracted a few scouting birds. Hopefully the spring of 2024 may be our lucky year
Back in the 1980s, a pair of kestrels nested reliably in a box positioned in the large sugar maple along our Farm Road. These exquisite, robin-sized, falcons were an absolute joy to behold as they would soar, hover, and plunge over the pastures and lawns searching for insects, small mammals, amphibians, and reptiles.
For many years we have been without a nesting pair, and for the past several decades DEEP has listed American Kestrels as a species of special concern.
Working with Art Gingert, who is well known in the State for his decades of d devotion to reestablishing nesting pairs of kestrels, we have installed a kestrel box on the eastern side of our pasture. No takers yet, but the box will be back up early in the spring of 2024, and we are hopeful.