Homeschool Family Program

Raccoon Family Academy

A Rewilding Homeschool Family Program

An outdoor day of crafts and play for homeschool families once a month. Class is always on a Friday, but the dates vary from last Friday to second to last Friday of the month. The curriculum is geared toward families; it’s not as “hardcore” or knowledge intense as a normal adult class, but also not over-simplified for adults. It’s a mellow day of *play* in the woods for children and crafting for adults. Younger students explore earthly objects through play, for building foundations in natural crafting, tool-making, and fort construction. Our themes help to direct the children’s play to inspire our desired outcome: knowledge and sense of place. Play is central to developing skills and connections to nature that help a child later in life in caring for the environment. It’s also a foundation for the crafting skills that come later in life with focus, patience, and dexterity. While the children engage in invisibly directed “free” play in the morning, the adults and very young children will sit and work on crafts. This creates the element of seeing our parents act as role models who are connecting to nature through the joy of creating something from natural materials. In the afternoon the children will come back from play and work with their parents on the projects. This is a great setup for not being too “teachy” for kids, but having a role-model and framework for building connection to nature and creativity within our families. Our curriculum is inspired by Jon Young’s Art of Mentoring or “invisible education” model (which comes from earth-based cultures from around the world), the writings of John Holt, Jean Liedloff, Grace Llewellyn, and some of the philosophy behind Waldorf education. The age range of children is 0 – 11. At ages eleven and twelve we see an increase in children’s desires to do more activities away from the family, or more individual pursuits. For that, we have our teen programs.

Rough breakdown of the day:

One Friday a month (check below for actual dates). 9:30am – 2:30 pm.

9:30am – Greet and games. Thanksgiving address. Animal forms.
10:00am – Story time.
10:30am – Children go play games emulating animals from the story. Learning various aspects of survival.
Adults work on the crafting project.
11:00am – Snack time
11:30am – Crafting, play and free time.
1:00pm – Lunch time
1:30pm – Kids work on craft project with parents.
2:15pm – Story of the day, say goodbyes.
2:30pm – Finish

Staff

Peter Bauer – Adult/Parents Instructor
Sarah Hill – Youth Instructor
Deirdre Spahr – Youth Instructor
(alternate Jesse Ambrose – Youth Instructor)

Social Guidelines and Policies

Rewild Portland believes that blanket policies regarding behavior for children of different ages and backgrounds results in lost learning experiences. Instead we use developmentally appropriate guidelines and processes based on the needs of both the group as a whole and individuals in order to maintain social cohesion and safety. Every potential family should download and read our guidelines before enrolling in the program. Download it here.

Cost:

$75 per Family: 1 parent and 1-2 children, per session ($600/12 months).
$50 per additional parent, per session.
$30 per additional child, per session.
Children 3 and under come for free and must stay with parents.

We will give a half refund up to two weeks before the workshop. If we do not fill a class we provide full refunds.

Registration

You can enroll your family for all of them or sign-up for individual months. If you enroll you are reserving your spot for the class. Enrollment registration sets up a monthly charge on your account. Monthly sign-ups are a one-time payment for the month that you choose. By enrolling you are insuring your space in the program. Monthly sign-ups are the spaces available beyond those who are enrolled. They are on a first come first serve basis. If you have any problems with enrollment or payments, or you would like to pay offline, please contact us through our [CONTACT PAGE].

Monthly Themes

Each month has an animal for a theme. Each animal has a story about how it came to be and how it learned it’s particular set of survival strategies. Through these themes we teach various survival strategies and how humans learned from the animals. After we hear the story the adults work on the crafts and skills from the story, while the children do the same but in a more playful way. After the adults are deep in the work and have the basics down the children will return to sit with their parents and watch as their parents work on the crafts.

*Themes are subject to change.