Nature Sense Outdoor School

02/27/2020

If you enjoyed following the nature story through Nature Sense Outdoor School, you can continue seeing my posts through Riekes Nature!

https://www.facebook.com/riekesnature/

Creating deep connections to nature is the cornerstone of our department. Whether it is learning to identify 20 species of birds by song, how to track coyotes, or how to build a debris shelter, each student follows their own passion in nature.

01/28/2020

Nature Sense Outdoor School Update

Hello Everyone!

It is with great excitement that I can now announce that I have been hired as the Director of the Riekes Center for Human Enhancement Nature Department.

This means that I will no longer be operating programs under the Nature Sense Outdoor School name. However, I will continue to operate programs as part of the Riekes Center Nature Department.

Please check out the Riekes Center Nature Department program offerings at www.riekes.org

The Nature Sense Outdoor School summer camps will now be run as Riekes Center summer camps. I hope to see everyone who was interested in the Nature Sense summer camps at the Riekes camps this summer! Summer Camp registration is open, and there are camps offered at Stevens Creek County Park (for those in the South Bay).

Please contact me if you have any questions regarding past Nature Sense Outdoor School programs or programs that you would like to see offered through the Riekes Center.

Thank you to everyone who made the Nature Sense Outdoor School journey so amazing and special. I look forward to being outside with you again!

Phone: (650) 364 – 2509 | Email: [email protected] | The Riekes Center | 3455 Edison Way Menlo Park CA 94025 | designed + developed by delux multimedia

11/03/2019

Nature Sense Outdoor School is excited to introduce the Saturday Nature Adventures program. Due to many requests and increasing interest, we have decided to offer a nature studies weekend program. Sign up is for individual days, so families can decide which Saturdays work best!

In the Saturday Nature Adventures program, students will get the experience of being outside and connecting deeply with nature, with each other, and with themselves.

While wandering through Steven’s Creek County Park, students will learn about the native edible and medicinal plants of the region, learn to identify various animals and their tracks and sign, discover how to identify bird species by sight and by song, engage in mapping and compass work (for the pr***en days), play games that deepen sensory awareness, and participate in learning various ancient living and survival skills.

Check out our Free Wander Days and Homeschool Nature Studies programs as well!

https://naturesenseschool.org/saturday-nature-adventures

11/03/2019

Nature Sense Outdoor School

Description: This program was inspired by popular demand for a weekend nature program for kids who attend school and cannot participate in homeschooling nature studies programs. This program runs for 4 hours from 1pm-5pm. Registration is $45 per day, and you can choose the dates that work best for

11/02/2019

What a day with the Wednesday Kingfishers this week! It was so cold at the start of the day, that we decided to hike to keep ourselves warm. A little dirt road that split off the trail brought us into a clearing that was littered in old and fresh Grey Fox s**t. The s**ts were full of California Coffee berry seeds.

Looking up a slope that was densely covered by coyote brush and coffee berry bushes, we could see a ridge capped by live oak trees. The kids decided that they needed to go on an epic bushwhacking adventure to the top of the ridge, so into the tangled bushes we went. It was some of the roughest scrambling you can imagine. We made it 40 feet in 20 minutes, crawling and slithering our way through the branches. The kids were stoked when I showed them how to climb to the tops of the bushes and then bend them over onto the next bush so that they could climb from tree to tree. This made the journey a lot faster. Unfortunately we encountered some poison oak in the tree tops, so when we reached the top of the ridge, we harvested a large soaproot bulb and headed to the reservoir to wash off. On the way to the reservoir, one kid found an old deer bone, which became the tool that we used to mash the soaproot into a foamy soap.

After cleaning off the poison oak with the soaproot, a mud fight, tracking a deer who trotted across the mudflats, an unexpected and dramatic plunge into the reservoir by one student, and a chapter of A Wolf Called Wander, we journeyed back to our main meeting place and pounded acorns into flour.

While half the group pounded acorns, the other half journaled the anatomy of flowers. One student has been working really hard to get a coal using his bow-drill, and I am pretty sure he will get his first coal next week!

Nature is amazing.

10/28/2019

Very exciting find up in our local mountains. Anyone have a guess as to who made these tracks? Extra credit if you can tell right from left, front from back, likely gait, and male vs female!

10/19/2019

The After School Owls have found their nest! A giant, many trunked bay tree was the center of their world, and they all pretended to be birds roosting in a nest. Next to the bay tree was an old pine that was covered in acorn woodpecker holes. While the owls roosted, the acorn woodpeckers scooted up and down the pine tree, tapping Valley Oak acorns into place for the winter. The kids were excited to learn that the bay tree is related to avocados.

On our way back to the cars, at the end of the day, some kids picked bouquets of a dried flower called Pearly Everlasting. It makes any room smell wonderful.

10/16/2019

The Wednesday Kingfishers’ day in a nutshell (an acorn shell): Gratitude circle. Cracking acorns for flour. Making nature journals. Playing foxtail tag. Journey through the creek. Kingfishers flying overhead. Finding a watermelon plant growing in the wild. The deer ran away from us. Blindfold drum-stalk. Red shouldered hawk calling, and the kids pointing it out. Journaling acorn processing steps. Capture the flag. A walk through the oak chaparral back to the cars. Gratitude circle.

Wonderful and wanderful day!

10/14/2019

The Friday After School Owls kids were very adventurous this week! At the start of the afternoon, one child found an oak gal on the ground and wanted to see what was inside. We cut it open, and we actually found two oak gal wasp larvae! One already had wings.

On the ground, near the oak gal, was a giant piece of eucalyptus bark. I had beeswax crayons and watercolor pencils in my backpack, and the kids decided to draw on the piece of bark. Nature paper!

There is a tricky segment of the creek bank that the kids have avoided until this week. They faced the challenge of traversing over exposed roots and steep, crumbling dirt banks to make it all the way to a rocky shore. They then carefully crossed a narrow log and scrambled up through a thicket of Box Elder trees. We emerged from the forest onto a familiar field, and were excited to meet a dog called Annie.

Our last activity of the day was taking a two minute adventure down a trail that we had never explored. The kids walked as fast as they could for two minutes, and when two minutes had passed, we stopped and looked at how far we had journeyed into a completely new place!

Next week is going to be awesome!

10/10/2019

The Wednesday Kingfishers worked hard today to finish their bow-drill kits! They all broke in their oak hand holds, which was all that was left for them to each finish a bow-drill set. We also made soapstone beads today, and I was particularly excited to discover that all the kids remembered how to make cordage to hang the beads on.

After our projects were done, we retreated into the shade for a story and lunch (listed in order of importance to the kids).

Today was a big journaling day. The kids took Dani, one of our instructors, on a walk and pretended that she knew nothing about nature. Each kid got to show Dani one thing that they could tell her about, and then the whole group journaled that thing. Buckeye or “fire-tree”, deer tracks, poison oak, wild rose, and gray fox tracks vs bobcat tracks were the topics journaled!

Once our journalathon was complete, we took some well earned time off to go play in the mud.

Can’t wait for next week!

10/07/2019

We just had some spaces open up in two of our Free Wanders, and we have added two new Free Wanders in November!

Come join us for an afternoon of fun in nature, and learn about our school!

The next sessions of the After School Owls programs and the Magical Monday Dandelions program are starting in December, and we still have spaces available in our Homeschooling Nature Studies Programs.

Hope to see you soon!

https://naturesenseschool.org/summer-and-fall-free-wanders-free-events

10/05/2019

Another fantastic Free Wander today! The kids loved learning about animal skulls. Everyone put in some hard work to make their soapstone beads, and I saw some awesome teamwork between the kids to get all the bead holes drilled!

From a patch of mugwort plants we gathered a giant ball of dried leaves for our coal extender, and then constructed a tinder-bundle from dry grass and mugwort. We had a lot of fun putting sticks on the fire.

After dousing the fire with creek water, we hiked down a dirt road and then played at the creek for the rest of the day!

Thank you to everyone who came out for the Free Wander! It was a great day!