If you don't have one already, consider putting together a naturalist backpack for your child. Having a journal and a few simple tools on their outdoor adventures can bring deeper connection and meaning to your child's experience of the natural world. Here are ideas for possible items to include:

• A nature journal — any unlined blank notebook will do. This will be used for making observations and drawing nature-inspired pictures. You can even make your own notebook with printer paper, a hole-punch and some string.

• Child’s magnifying glass

• Ruler and/or measuring tape

• Compass

• Dental mirror for looking in hard-to-see places (especially good for looking under the cap of mushrooms)

• Small flashlight

• Children’s binoculars

• Small plastic container for gathering nature finds

May you and your child(ren) have a beautiful time exploring and drawing closer to nature!

We are thrilled to introduce TreeSong’s Forest School!
Forest School is outdoor education with a dynamic approach to academics.

Imagine a classroom with no walls! TreeSong’s Forest School for grades K-8 offers a truly unique experience to the homeschooled child. With our unique, multi-disciplinary, holistic approach to learning, children are immersed in the natural world and related studies, while receiving robust support with academics. Most of our day is spent outside in the riverside forest at TreeSong — exploring, discovering, and learning.

We are so excited to share TreeSong’s Forest School with you. There’s so much more to learn — click below to read more.

Click below for a spring flower walk with TreeSong’s director, Michelle Fox. This educational video was a part of Mama Fox Nature School last spring, and is meant to teach children native flower species.

Check out instructor Cader Olive’s Family Tracking Class: Reading the Stories in Tracks and Sign, coming up this summer on July 30th!

Get the whole family together to learn visual skills that will help you see tracks and sign. Learn basic info about kinds of tracks and sign, where to look for them, who made them, and how they can tell us what happened.

Here’s a native animal guessing game to play with your kids!

Who am I?

See if you can figure out who this Mystery Native Animal is. Pause between each clue. If your child thinks they know who the animal is, have them put their finger on their nose, not call it out (they'll offer their guess at the very end). If they get a clue that doesn’t match what they're thinking and they now don’t know who the animal is, they take their finger off their nose. Read all the clues and then at the end, count to three and they can reveal their guess! So fun.

Installment two in our native animal guessing game!

Who am I?

See if you can figure out who this Mystery Native Animal is. Pause between each clue. If your child thinks they know who the animal is, have them put their finger on their nose, not call it out (they'll offer their guess at the very end). If they get a clue that doesn’t match what they're thinking and they now don’t know who the animal is, they take their finger off their nose. Read all the clues and then at the end, count to three and they can reveal their guess! So fun.

Installment three in our native animal guessing game!

Who am I?

See if you can figure out who this Mystery Native Animal is. Pause between each clue. If your child thinks they know who the animal is, have them put their finger on their nose, not call it out (they'll offer their guess at the very end). If they get a clue that doesn’t match what they're thinking and they now don’t know who the animal is, they take their finger off their nose. Read all the clues and then at the end, count to three and they can reveal their guess! So fun.

A fun game for you all — Two Coyotes.

The older kiddos at our Elemental Forest Magic Camp loved this game! First, choose two people to be coyotes. They will each tuck the end of a bandana (a coyote tail) in their belt loop or the back of their pants. If you're with a bigger group, have everyone but the two coyotes form a circle with the two coyotes in the center. The object of the game is to be the first one to remove the other coyote's tail with little to no physical contact. When a coyote loses their tail, someone from the circle replaces them. A fun additional piece to this game: the onlookers in the circle can try to pull a tail from where they are in the circle (no stepping forward, though) if a coyote ends up getting too close. In this case, the person who pulls the tail replaces the tail-less coyote in the center. Good times!

Some fall fun for you and your child!

Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert is a classic book that we return to each autumn. After reading it, we go on a leaf hunt and see how many leaves we can find, enjoying the different shapes and colors while identifying what kind of tree each leaf came from. Then, with the book as inspiration, the children create all sorts of leaf pictures using the found leaves (and other nature items). We hope you'll enjoy this educational and creative seasonal activity!

The Gift of Gratitude

During the opening circle of many of our Forest School and Circle Keepers days, we read Greetings and Thanks after lighting our candle. This beautiful reading was inspired by the Thanksgiving Address of the Onondaga Nation, Haudenosaunee, and is an oral tradition used at gatherings. Sharing this is a lovely way to bring a gratitude practice into our days. We bring the experience alive by acting it out as we read, expressing each line creatively with movement. Last school year, we created a Greetings and Thanks class book, with each child contributing a page.

Consider introducing this reading to your children. Perhaps your family, too, may want to act out each line, make a book, and/or share your own personal greetings and thanks with each other.

Click here to view Greetings and Thanks in its entirety. May you find this practice a meaningful way to celebrate the many gifts of nature and to experience the positive power of gratitude.

Give a gift to the birds! 

What you’ll need:

• twine

• pine cones

• healthy peanut butter

• wild bird seed

Here’s what you do:

Tie the twine to the pine cone.
Coat the pine cone with peanut butter. Roll the pine cone in the bird seed.
Hang your peanut butter pine cone in a tree and give the birds a tasty treat!

“When my children were little, it was a tradition to read The Night Tree by Eve Bunting, a book about a family who decorates a tree in the woods with treats for the animals. We would then bedeck one of our outside trees with these homemade bird feeders.”​
— Michelle Fox

2023 summer camp registration is now open!

We have five camps this year — Nature Adventures Day Camp, Fairy Adventures Day Camp, Elemental Forest Magic Camp, and two new Wilderness Skills Camps.

Follow the link below to find out more and sign your child(ren) up. We’re excited!

Take a springtime flower walk!

Time to go out and explore all the green growing things that are starting to emerge. Perhaps bring along a field guide and your nature journal so you can draw what you discover.

You’ll find a downloadable Native Flower Handout below!

Tune into the birds in your neighborhood with your kids! Check out these two made-for-kids documents:

The butterflies have been out in full force during our summer camps, much to everyone's delight (especially at fairy camp where we say butterflies are fairies in disguise!). We'd like to share some great butterfly information with you so you too can dive into the wonderful world of butterflies. Enjoy!