Give your child the gift of a joyful, nature-filled summer with friends.

2025 Summer Adventures is now full. 

Registration opened in January to families who are currently enrolled in Wander & Root programs. All spaces have been filled. 

In 2025, our Summer Adventures program will:

• be held on Fridays,

• from 9 am to 3 pm,

• for ages 4-10,

• cost $400 for full summer,

• and include a balance of time for nature connection, imagination, teamwork, and PLAY! Every day, children can look forward to circle times full of story and song; experiential, hands-on small group work; a nature walk throughout the property and garden; and most important of all… time to play in nature with friends.

Previous Summer Adventures Camps:

Camping

It's ALWAYS the season for campfires, fireside snacks, and spending time in nature. Join us for a fun week of setting up tents, building and cooking over a fire, hanging up trash, telling tall tales, singing camp songs, and learning the unwritten “rules” of camping. All gear will be provided. No matter your experience level with camping, this week will prepare and inspire all of us to prioritize and ENJOY sleeping under the stars. 

Magnificent, Marvelous Mini Beasts

Magnificent, marvelous mini beasts are stomping, flying, crawling, and maneuvering their way all around us. Spiders, praying mantises, cockroaches, ants, slugs, moths, maggots, and hundreds of invertebrates are constantly on the move, manipulating our environment and affecting our lives in ways you cannot imagine! Together, we will dive deep into their lives, learning about their incredible superpowers, habitats, and habits and the ways in which these tiny beasts rule our world. Prepare yourself for a week of both beauty and “ick;” sweet smells and rot; gentle floaters and creepy crawlers. Perfect for the lover of all things great and small!

Super Heroes and Villains of the Plant World

Mysterious Moss, a hero of disguise and pollution-fighting greatness. Terrific Tree, a keeper of the ozone and fresh air. Willful Wisteria, a wily, violent, invader. Join us for a fantasy- and story-filled week of plant examination, gardening and foraging for medicine, identifying and protecting native plants, and destroying villainous invaders. With great power comes great responsibility; together, we must choose a life of great adventures and quests, tackling the good, the bad, the beautiful, and the ugly. What role will we play in the great fight to save plant life? How will plant life save us? 

We Are Captain Planet!

Earth, fire, wind, water, heart. With our powers combined, we are Captain Planet! Take a journey through the elements of our world. Soil beneath our feet, fire in the forest, wind-riding pollen, water-loving creatures, and human hearts full of strength and love; all play a role in the natural world and ALL need our help to survive. Together, we will learn about each of these elements while working on the skills MOST likely to set us up for success conserving the natural world - questioning, problem solving, creativity, collaboration, persistence, and a sense of awe and wonder. The power is yours. Let’s go!

Find Your Way

“There comes a time in every child’s life when they have a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.” - Mark Twain. Treasure is here… but can you find it? Spend a week preparing for a grand adventure, limited only by our own abilities and imagination. Together, we will use cardinal directions, coordinates, geocaching software, and our sense of adventure to seek and find treasure and complete the adventurer’s greatest challenge - the lost test. Perfect for children that love adventure, intrigue, teamwork, and FUN!

Our Model

Learning will take place on a 50-acre private homestead in rural Jackson Springs, NC. Learning has never been so fun! Through exploration, adventure and free play in nature, children learn together in small groups gaining knowledge of plants, animals, gardening, sustainability, friendship, and themselves. 

When you arrive, you will see our basecamp and outdoor classroom, a place for us to store our personal items, fill our water bottles, and prepare for the day’s adventures. Beyond basecamp, lies the forested cove, with splashing creek, mud kitchen, trail system, nature ninja course, fort-building area, rolling hill, campfire circle, and more. Every day, our nature walks take us even further throughout the property to enjoy fields of young longleaf pines, the orchard, the garden, chicken coop, makerspace, and our renovated antique one-room school house turned process art studio. This, and more, is our classroom.

All Wander & Root programs occur outside, in all safe weather, rain or shine. During severe weather, we take shelter inside our basecamp or in our art studio barn.

Our program follows the principles of the forest kindergarten movement, and is heavily influenced by The Cedarsong Way methodology:

• Low teacher to student ratios: We maintain a 1:7 (or lower) ratio of staff to students. This is 1/3 the number of children in a typical classroom and summer camp.

• All-weather nature immersion time every day: We find joy and opportunities for learning in all (safe) weather conditions. 

• Child-inspired emergent curriculum: Deep learning takes place when children are engaged in something that interests them and is relevant to them. There is no whole-room, one-size-fits-all instruction here!

• Inquiry-based teaching: Educators support and guide learners to make conclusions on their own. As a result, children build their resilience, confidence, and problem-solving skills.

• Place-based education: We foster learning in a natural environment that connects children to local flora, fauna, people, places, and culture. 

• Compassion-scaffolding: Educators guide and coach children toward being respectful, mindful, aware of and empathetic towards all of nature’s living beings.