Kids’ Nature Connection Programs
Nelson BC Winter 2020
Our winter programs for the young ones are full. Fridays are open.
We are not offering spring break camps this year.
Spring sessions will be announced soon!
Click on the program names to read more and sign up and pay.
Please fill in the Registration Form.
The Forest Path connects kids to our beautiful natural playground – our birthright to smell, taste, feel and hear the living land around us. In a playful way, we deepen our nature skills, which will also deepen our community skills and our relationship with our own self. The Forest Path has offered programs since 2017. We believe nature is the best teacher that models values such as belonging, quiet mind, generosity, resilience and vitality. Qualities that are most likely to be very much needed for the unknown future. It is time for really taking care of the Earth. Forest school is one step.
Hope to see you in the forest!
Wild Fridays 1 – 4 pm Jan – Feb – March$192.00 + GSTWild Fridays are for kids age 7 - 12 who like to be outside and be active, and practice skills of wilderness survival like fire making and finding food, sneaking close to animals, growing resilience to weather and emotions and just enjoy playing in our beautiful place on earth. Fridays at 1 pm - 4 pm, from January 10th till March 6th (8 weeks) (no program on the proD day Feb 14th). Location in Nelson or close by. We are welcoming homeschoolers, Waldorf kids, Wildflower kids, and kids who are going to another school and like a half-day of outdoor education.
Forest Kids Thursdays Winter 2020$216.00 + GSTThursday morning Forest School for age 3 to 6. All outdoor adventures from 10 am to 1 pm. 9 weeks, January 9th to March 5th. Location to be announced but in Nelson or close by. This is our third year with winter forest school! We are welcoming preschoolers, homeschoolers, and kids who are going to school but prefers one day of outdoor education.
ABOUT
The Forest Path aims to create full-body experiences of feeling alive and connected, to the wild, to within, with each other. We offer outdoor education programs and camps in Nelson BC Canada for children to get outside, learn nature skills and be mentored to grow wholesomely.
In a time of the 6th large extinction of species in the history of the Earth, with widening gaps between rich and poor, climate change and only half of the forests than before humans, there is a need for mindful loving connection to nature and learning from the native people’s ways. We acknowledge that this is unceded homeland, xaʔxáʔ tumxʷulaʔxʷ, of the Sinixt, and that the Ktunaxa and Syilx peoples also lived on this land.
In a safe container of sharing circle, empathetic listening, mentoring and a balance of action and silence, we give children an opportunity to just be in nature. We let nature connect to us, let curiosity and creativity flow. We do crafts, games, yoga, make fire, build forts, look for seasonal signs. We learn about plants and animals and the cycles in nature, about outdoor skills and about our own gifts and how we can relate to others.
The Forest Path began at spring break 2017 by Malin Christensson, who as a child went to the Swedish outdoor education program called ‘Skogs Mulle’, that was started in the 1950:s. She worked many years with sustainability education at the Centre for Environment and Development Studies at Uppsala University, Sweden. Malin is also a kids yoga and mindfulness teacher. She has an updated first aid training and 5 million liability insurance. She loves trees, to sing and make a fire.
Read more about all our teachers.
OUR INSPIRATION
We are inspired by nature and the wonder and happiness and aliveness we experience when being outdoors. We are influenced by other deep nature connection organizations, like 8 shields and Art of Mentoring of Jon Young, Wisdom of the Earth with the Wolf School at Saltspring Island, Twin Eagles Wilderness School in Sandpoint Idaho, and the forest kindergartens in Canada (for example in Victoria, Vancouver, Rossland and Creston) as well where they originated in the 1950s in Sweden and 1960s in Germany. There are now over 1000 forest kindergartens in Germany. We are also drawing on wisdom from First Nations, Awaken the Dreamer, deep ecology and Joanna Macy and mindfulness.
Our ambition is to nurture deeper relations between parents, children and our surroundings.
Every program balances free nature play and facilitated games, art and crafts, adjusted to the age and interests of the kids. We playfully add mindfulness, yoga, and music into the day. Kindness and community are our other key values, including a deep awe and respect for the natural world. The children learn to watch for hazards and try basic bushcraft skills on how to survive in the wild.