Santa Cruz Forest School
Santa Cruz Forest School at The NEST outdoor education center, 645 Toll House Gulch Rd, Felton, CA 95018
About
Santa Cruz Forest School is an entirely outdoor, play-based nature program where children spend their days climbing, building and crafting from what nature offers, and engaging in free play. Daily activities include whittling sticks using a potato peeler, discovering and naming plants, birds, mushrooms, insects, lizards, and salamanders, as well as dramatic play, hide and seek, puddle-stomping and rain dancing, hole digging, and looking for creatures under logs. A typical day also includes circle time, snack, lunch, and various crafts and games.
• Ages: 3–6 years old
• Schedule: Year-round program meeting Monday through Thursday from 9:00am to 2:00pm, with Summer Camp 2026 sessions and drop-in days from June 15 to August 13, and a school year running from the Tuesday after Labor Day 2026 through the week before Memorial Day weekend 2027
• Price: $30 registration fee applies; monthly tuition fees are calculated based on number of days attending per week
Santa Cruz Forest School began in 2016 as an entirely outdoor, nature-based program for 3 to 6-year-old children. The outdoor classroom uses open-ended materials, offers imaginative play, and includes both large and fine motor challenges, with rain shelters and campfires used to keep children cozy and dry while meeting outside, rain or shine. Groups contain up to ten children with two teachers, and the program partners with the owners of the NEST, an outdoor education center in Felton.
The program’s mission states that it is a play-based nature program where exploration, learning, and play blend, centered around cultivating friendship and experiencing the land season by season. The mission also describes celebrating each season by noticing, gathering, sorting, tasting, and crafting with nature, encouraging appreciation and respect toward the natural world and each other, and using a whole child approach that emphasizes a child's development as a whole person.
One parent, Danielle Ferretti, reports that her daughter is about to complete her second year, spends hours playing outside, enjoys nature spaces, and is “rich with knowledge about plants and animals,” and she describes the teachers as wonderful. Another parent, Vanessa Valencia, shares that forest school has been “amazing” for her child, who has “blossomed into such a confident little guy,” talks about plants and animals he learns about, and is always excited to go to school. A third parent states that Santa Cruz Forest School was “just what we were looking for,” noting that their daughter spends all day playing outside and learning about nature, brings home artwork and nature-inspired crafts, and that the teachers are “so much fun, very kind and great with the kids.”
Last updated June 25, 2026.
• Ages: 3–6 years old
• Schedule: Year-round program meeting Monday through Thursday from 9:00am to 2:00pm, with Summer Camp 2026 sessions and drop-in days from June 15 to August 13, and a school year running from the Tuesday after Labor Day 2026 through the week before Memorial Day weekend 2027
• Price: $30 registration fee applies; monthly tuition fees are calculated based on number of days attending per week
Santa Cruz Forest School began in 2016 as an entirely outdoor, nature-based program for 3 to 6-year-old children. The outdoor classroom uses open-ended materials, offers imaginative play, and includes both large and fine motor challenges, with rain shelters and campfires used to keep children cozy and dry while meeting outside, rain or shine. Groups contain up to ten children with two teachers, and the program partners with the owners of the NEST, an outdoor education center in Felton.
The program’s mission states that it is a play-based nature program where exploration, learning, and play blend, centered around cultivating friendship and experiencing the land season by season. The mission also describes celebrating each season by noticing, gathering, sorting, tasting, and crafting with nature, encouraging appreciation and respect toward the natural world and each other, and using a whole child approach that emphasizes a child's development as a whole person.
One parent, Danielle Ferretti, reports that her daughter is about to complete her second year, spends hours playing outside, enjoys nature spaces, and is “rich with knowledge about plants and animals,” and she describes the teachers as wonderful. Another parent, Vanessa Valencia, shares that forest school has been “amazing” for her child, who has “blossomed into such a confident little guy,” talks about plants and animals he learns about, and is always excited to go to school. A third parent states that Santa Cruz Forest School was “just what we were looking for,” noting that their daughter spends all day playing outside and learning about nature, brings home artwork and nature-inspired crafts, and that the teachers are “so much fun, very kind and great with the kids.”
Last updated June 25, 2026.
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