Forest Village Thursdays 10 am - 2 pm
Winter/Spring 2023 March 2 through June 1 (no class on 3/30)

On Thursdays we welcome children ages 5-12 with a big teaching team and an array of activities for children to choose. Forest Village is designed to support children, in developmentally appropriate ways, in nurturing friendships, self awareness, self determination and community. Together we explore our affinity for nature, creativity, field biology and outdoors skills. Campers are an integral part of planning and creating camp.
Details
Class meets at Nature and Nurture Farm in Dexter, MI on Thursdays from 10 am until 2 pm.
$643 is the cost for the series. Payment and health/liability forms are required for enrollment (see payment and refund policies). Scholarships of 25% or 50% off, and payment plans are available upon request. You are also invited to consider donating additional funds with your full tuition, if you're able, to support scholarships for students in need.
Details
Class meets at Nature and Nurture Farm in Dexter, MI on Thursdays from 10 am until 2 pm.
$643 is the cost for the series. Payment and health/liability forms are required for enrollment (see payment and refund policies). Scholarships of 25% or 50% off, and payment plans are available upon request. You are also invited to consider donating additional funds with your full tuition, if you're able, to support scholarships for students in need.
Keeping it Safe in the Time of Covid
We pay close attention to emerging research and guidance around safety in the time of Covid. Please check out our safety protocols.
We pay close attention to emerging research and guidance around safety in the time of Covid. Please check out our safety protocols.

Instructor
Syndallas Baughman grew up on the water and in the forests of Michigan and Florida and earned a B.S. in Biology at University of Michigan and M.S. Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Irvine. Along the way she’s camped and studied plants and pollinators in the Siskiyous in S.W. Oregon, swamps, forests and fields of Michigan, Kauai, coastal and desert California, and the California Sierra Nevada. She taught at El Cerrito Preschool Cooperative, learning from wise and loving mentors to step back and follow and support kids’ ideas. At Wildcat Community Free School she followed kids through creeks and forests, set up experiments, supervised the use of power tools, knives and fire, facilitated democratic decision making and mediated a lot of arguments about Pokemon Card trades. She’s planted native gardens with preschoolers to high school students, and camped all over the U.S.A. with her two sons.
Syndallas spent much of the past decade at an automotive manufacturing plant where her responsibilities included developing accountable health and safety systems with teams of union leaders, production operators and supervision. She recently served on a Michigan State working group developing guidance for community centers and public events around COVID safety. She's currently at EMU earning her secondary teaching certificate in biology. She participates in consensus decision making with her neighbors at home at Great Oak Cohousing Community. The beautiful wild world is the place Syndallas wants to be! She loves sharing nature connection with people and other living things and you!
Syndallas Baughman grew up on the water and in the forests of Michigan and Florida and earned a B.S. in Biology at University of Michigan and M.S. Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Irvine. Along the way she’s camped and studied plants and pollinators in the Siskiyous in S.W. Oregon, swamps, forests and fields of Michigan, Kauai, coastal and desert California, and the California Sierra Nevada. She taught at El Cerrito Preschool Cooperative, learning from wise and loving mentors to step back and follow and support kids’ ideas. At Wildcat Community Free School she followed kids through creeks and forests, set up experiments, supervised the use of power tools, knives and fire, facilitated democratic decision making and mediated a lot of arguments about Pokemon Card trades. She’s planted native gardens with preschoolers to high school students, and camped all over the U.S.A. with her two sons.
Syndallas spent much of the past decade at an automotive manufacturing plant where her responsibilities included developing accountable health and safety systems with teams of union leaders, production operators and supervision. She recently served on a Michigan State working group developing guidance for community centers and public events around COVID safety. She's currently at EMU earning her secondary teaching certificate in biology. She participates in consensus decision making with her neighbors at home at Great Oak Cohousing Community. The beautiful wild world is the place Syndallas wants to be! She loves sharing nature connection with people and other living things and you!

Instructor
Eva Leventer has been teaching camps, classes and after school programs for seventeen years. She graduated from the Rudolf Steiner School of Ann Arbor in 2001. She studied art at Earlham College and earned a visual arts teaching certification from Eastern Michigan University. She recently, finished a forest and nature school training for early childhood educators. And she is a parent to her son Yonah who is four.
Eva integrates children’s passions into the learning. She’s interested in cultivating mindful awareness of plants, animals and humans. She encourages children to be free spirits working in community. She seeks to bring the eight directions into her teaching creating rhythm and balance in her classes. She opens her heart to emotionally support each child and warmly hold the group.
Eva Leventer has been teaching camps, classes and after school programs for seventeen years. She graduated from the Rudolf Steiner School of Ann Arbor in 2001. She studied art at Earlham College and earned a visual arts teaching certification from Eastern Michigan University. She recently, finished a forest and nature school training for early childhood educators. And she is a parent to her son Yonah who is four.
Eva integrates children’s passions into the learning. She’s interested in cultivating mindful awareness of plants, animals and humans. She encourages children to be free spirits working in community. She seeks to bring the eight directions into her teaching creating rhythm and balance in her classes. She opens her heart to emotionally support each child and warmly hold the group.

Instructor. Anne ErlewineAnne Erlewine studied art and creative writing at the University of Michigan and Naropa University in Boulder, CO after her close mentorship in her youth with her artist Grandmother, Phyllis Anne Erlewine.
Anne taught art classes through Artworks in Big Rapids, Michigan, Earthwork Family Weekend, and has embarked on several community murals with young people. Anne has created and curated community art spaces for sharing art work, music, poetry and performance.
Presently, Anne lives in her home town of Ann Arbor with her husband Michael and her two young kids Emma and Josephine. She works at NLC and runs a small business as a fine artist and music performer.
She is in the process of creating a studio space to teach art classes from her home.
Her artist statement is as follows:
Moving through life, holding space for creativity by practicing it and teaching it, creates sustainable reserves that allow one to close the loop between inner design and the outer reflection that affirms it. In a world receding in resources, the preservation of this aspect of human experience is vital.
My art is about keeping this aspect in me alive, encouraging others to do the same, and seeking to portray and preserve what inspires me, so that others may see it, feel it, and to consider the path in their reflection of it.
Anne taught art classes through Artworks in Big Rapids, Michigan, Earthwork Family Weekend, and has embarked on several community murals with young people. Anne has created and curated community art spaces for sharing art work, music, poetry and performance.
Presently, Anne lives in her home town of Ann Arbor with her husband Michael and her two young kids Emma and Josephine. She works at NLC and runs a small business as a fine artist and music performer.
She is in the process of creating a studio space to teach art classes from her home.
Her artist statement is as follows:
Moving through life, holding space for creativity by practicing it and teaching it, creates sustainable reserves that allow one to close the loop between inner design and the outer reflection that affirms it. In a world receding in resources, the preservation of this aspect of human experience is vital.
My art is about keeping this aspect in me alive, encouraging others to do the same, and seeking to portray and preserve what inspires me, so that others may see it, feel it, and to consider the path in their reflection of it.