GENERAL INFO
Mountain Kids offers outdoor education programs for children and teens from 5-16 years. Campers are split into four age groups to ensure they are met, supported and challenged at their own level.
Our day camps are available to all ages, while overnights begin for campers 9 and up. We offer play and exploration, hiking and mountain biking, overnights and backpacking, photography and adventure filmmaking, and more! We also have a Counselor in Training program for 13-16 year olds who love working with younger children and want to learn leadership skills.
OUR CORE BELIEFS
1. Nature connection is a gift that lasts a lifetime.
2. Safe, unstructured play provides powerful learning.
3. Nature fosters self-confidence, awareness, and a caring community.
4. Nature is beneficial to our physical and emotional well-being.
5. We care for the earth and all its inhabitants.
OUR ACTIVITIES
At Mountain Kids children spend all day outside connecting with nature, building confidence and a love of the outdoors. Our activities facilitate respect for one another and the natural world, building on children’s natural wonder and curiosity about nature.
We teach basic hiking, outdoor safety, and wilderness survival skills. Risk Management is paramount to what we do, while fun and learning are essential! Through cooperative games, singing, stories, art, free play, and guided quiet time, children’s innate curiosity about the natural world is embraced and nurtured. We run for joy, and slow down to listen and learn from nature’s wonders.
Weekly themes inform our circle time and activities. However, we embrace the serendipity of learning in nature where our classroom is always changing and presenting us with new and unplanned learning opportunities.
Children are assigned a new buddy each day to help them to build new friendships and to take care of one other.
OUR SCHEDULE
Each week of Mountain Kids runs Monday-Thursday and includes four different adventures to natural places in the Santa Fe area. Regular camp hours are 8:30-3:30. We offer Early Camp starting at 8:00 am, After Care until 5:00 pm and Friday Camp!
Each day we meet at Alto Park (behind the Bicentennial Pool) in downtown Santa Fe and travel via Adventure Van to one of many beautiful locations in the area. A few examples include: the Big Tesuque Campground, Little Tesuque Creek, Bandelier National Monument, Jemez Falls, the Rio en Medio Trail, Los Golondrinas, and Pecos Historical Monument. We adapt plans when necessary based on the weather.
A TYPICAL DAY
8:30-9:00 – Meet Counselors, Drop Carseat and Extra Clothes and Sign In
8:30-9:15 – Campers choose Morning Games, Art Project, Story time or River Play (new for 2017!:)
9:15-9:30 – Circle – Group Contract, Theme-Related Activity, Buddies!
9:30-10:00 – Snack and Load Adventure Vans
10:00 – Depart for Our Adventure: Kids enjoy stories during our drive to the mountains
10:30-12:00 – Hiking, Guided Activities, Exploration, Free Play, Fort Building, etc.
12:00 – Lunch
12:30-2:30 – Hiking, Art, Quiet Storytime, Sit Spots, Imaginative Play
2:30 – Snack, Reflection and Closure
3:00-3:30 – Return to Alto Park
3:30 – Parent Pick-up time
3:30-4:00 on Thursdays – Snack and Social
Sleep Well! 🙂