Clonlara Nature Explorers
Join us as we play and explore nature in and around our schools, practice outdoor skills, discuss big questions and build nature connected community.
Fall 2025
Clonlara Nature Explorers
Wednesdays 2-4pm
Sept 10-Nov 19th
Come play outside with us! Each Wednesday we'll build an ephermeral bush camp and connect with nature and each other. We’ll explore the season shift from summer- late fall while playing, creating, and learning in the schoolyard and local neighborhood.
We will work with our hands—carving tools, building fires, making cordage, and shelter. Depending on the group’s interests we could make our own charcoal pencils from willow twigs or experiment making dyes from fall fruits, bark and leaves or make a lantern using pine pitch and moss. Together we’ll cook simple snacks over the campfire, and learn ways to use our wild home’s fall bounty of sumac, acorns, hickory nuts and walnuts as foods and dyes. Our day ends with a cup of tea and time to share stories, discoveries, and plan our next gathering together. The class is led by Syndallas Baughman and Anne Erlewine, experienced outdoor educators from Nature Learning Community.
- How do different animals experience sound?
- When will we hear the last cricket of the season?
- Why do some tree leaves turn colors in the fall and others don’t?
- How do we feel as the season changes?
We will work with our hands—carving tools, building fires, making cordage, and shelter. Depending on the group’s interests we could make our own charcoal pencils from willow twigs or experiment making dyes from fall fruits, bark and leaves or make a lantern using pine pitch and moss. Together we’ll cook simple snacks over the campfire, and learn ways to use our wild home’s fall bounty of sumac, acorns, hickory nuts and walnuts as foods and dyes. Our day ends with a cup of tea and time to share stories, discoveries, and plan our next gathering together. The class is led by Syndallas Baughman and Anne Erlewine, experienced outdoor educators from Nature Learning Community.
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You can review our refund policy here.
We're happy to answer your questions!
Email us at [email protected]
We're happy to answer your questions!
Email us at [email protected]
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 camps all over the U.S.A. with her two now adult sons. She holds her secondary teaching certificate in biology and recently spent a service year with Americorps working in adult literacy and English learning with Washtenaw Literacy. Syndallas is a certified Michigan Naturalist. The beautiful wild world is the place Syndallas wants to be! She loves sharing nature connection with people and other living things and you!
Anne 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.