Where Learning Returns to Nature
Our Programs
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Summer Camps
Our summer programs give children and teens the chance to slow down, explore, and develop confidence through direct experiences in Nature. Campers practice attention, observation, and reflection — learning not just about Nature, but from it.
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Wellness Walks
Guided walks based on the Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku (forest bathing), inviting participants to slow down and engage with Nature through all five senses. Led by trained facilitators, these walks support stress reduction, mental clarity, and emotional balance through quiet observation and sensory awareness.
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Community Nature Days
Monthly gatherings for families to experience Nature together through observation, storytelling, and shared creativity. Activities include journaling, guided awareness exercises, and collaborative art projects that strengthen ecological understanding and community connection.
Reimagining learning and education
We believe education should root children in Nature, not confine them to classrooms. When students learn through direct experience with the living world, they develop deeper understanding, stronger connection, and lasting curiosity. Traditional education asks students to read about photosynthesis. We invite them to observe it — to watch light transform leaf, to measure, to draw, and to understand their place within the cycle.
When children learn through Nature, they gain more than knowledge. They cultivate wisdom, wonder, and the confidence to meet real challenges. Every park becomes a laboratory, every garden a classroom. Through partnerships with schools, hands-on teacher training, and proven outdoor curricula, we’re making nature-based education accessible to all children — regardless of zip code or income. We’re building bridges between traditional academics and outdoor experience, showing how math, literacy, science, and art all come alive outside.
K-2 Programming
Our Guiding Principal
At this age, the most meaningful education happens not through instruction, but through immersion. When children touch soil, tell stories, and reflect on choices, they learn how to think, feel, and belong. De Natura restores the original classroom — the living world itself — where curiosity leads to understanding and wisdom grows naturally.
Storytelling
The Foundation of Understanding
Story is the earliest and most natural form of human learning. Before children can analyze or calculate, they must first learn to see the world as a connected narrative. We use storytelling to cultivate empathy, imagination, and linguistic awareness — grounding learning in meaning and memory rather than rote fact.
Hands & Senses
Learning Through Experience
Early learning must move through the hands. Our youngest students engage directly with the natural world: gardening, building, mixing, and shaping. Through sensory play and tactile learning, they discover that thought is not separate from experience — it grows from it. Each movement of the hand becomes an act of awareness, reminding children that understanding begins with contact.
Decision Education
Learning How to Think
Inspired by the research of Daniel Kahneman and the work of the Alliance for Decision Education, our program helps children begin forming the habits of thoughtful decision-making. Through play, guided reflection, and group exploration, students learn how to notice cause and effect, weigh options, and consider others’ perspectives — building the foundations of ethical and reflective reasoning.
“No one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story.”
— Daniel Kahneman
Stay Rooted With Us!
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