Thank you for the community support and your interest in our licensed nature-based preschool.
Enrollment for the 2024-2025 school year has started! Please be sure to check out our Group Tour Schedule. (You and your child must participate a Group Tour to receive an application to the program.)
We are currently full for the 2022-2023 school year! If you are interested in being added to the waitlist for any of the sessions, please reach out to ForestFriends@wlfarm.org.
Program Description
Wright-Locke Farm Conservancy is excited to offer “Forest Friends,” a nature-immersive licensed preschool program for children ages 3 – 5 that takes place during the school year. Our small classes (capped at 10 students) will spend their day entirely outdoors, learning in and exploring nature year-round. Two teachers will facilitate the small group, creating a student-teacher ratio of 5:1 to ensure that your child is supported in their learning. Nature-based, forest programs differ from traditional schools in that learning is child-directed and emergent through play and exploration. While teachers will facilitate learning, topics and discoveries are based on students’ curiosity. Forest Friends is a licensed small group program by the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care.
Click these links for videos about the history of nature-based programs and what nature-based education looks like!
Our Space
Wright-Locke Farm stretches over 20 acres and includes our working, organic farm fields, pastures, forest, ponds, and wetlands. The farm property abuts an additional 120 acres of conservation land that includes miles of hiking trails. This variety of habitats ensures endless exploration and discovery for our students!
Forest Friends has its own designated space in the woods, which includes play areas, a diversity of natural spaces, and a lean-to. We also use the farm space, our Education Garden, and tend to the farm animals. We play outside, rain or shine!
“If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow. The years of early childhood are the time to prepare the soil.
-Rachel Carson (1965)
