Little Garden Patch Farm

Little Garden Patch Farm offers activities such as painting, playdough, bubbles, fairy gardens, dress up, play kitchen time, story time, and hands-on craft and science projects. Children can spend time outdoors in areas that include a tree fort, swings, a slide, a trampoline, an outdoor play kitchen, a garden, sensory tables, and an outdoor art studio where they can make projects, put on outdoor plays or puppet shows, and play games of make believe. The program also includes baking and cooking projects such as baking muffins, learning to tie-dye, creating a personal fairy garden to take home, and quiet-time options like sewing, crochet, weaving, fuse beads, drawing and coloring, and paper crafts.

• Ages: 5–9 years old (kindergarten through 3rd grade; homeschoolers 5–8 years old during regular after school hours)
• Schedule: After school care during the 2025–2026 school year Monday–Thursday after 3 pm with pick up beginning at 2:30, and Friday after school care with pick up beginning at 11:30; Spring Farm Camp runs Monday 4/6 through Friday 4/10; summer Farm Camp offers full-day sessions from 9–5 or 9:30–5:30 and afternoon half-day sessions from 1:30–5:30, with early drop off at 8:30 available for an added fee and closing at 5:30 pm
• Price: Beginning Spring & Summer 2026, Farm Camp Sessions are $200 per week for a 4-hour half day and $325 per week for an 8-hour full day; additional hours within business hours are $8/hour; full-time after school care is $7/hour for 15 or more hours per week and $9/hour for less than 15 hours per week

Children at Little Garden Patch Farm can visit and help with gentle farm animals, including milking goats, observing egg collection, gardening, and helping to feed the chickens, ducks, pony, and pigs, as well as shucking corn husks from the garden to feed the goats. Program options include Summer Farm Camp, an After School Program, Spring Farm Camp, and Home Schoolers On the Farm, with weekly themed summer sessions such as Medieval Make Believe, Fairy Tales, Dinosaur Daze, and Blast Off for Space Fun. The program generally does not offer screen time once children arrive and asks families to leave electronic devices at home, and parents are asked to send children in weather-appropriate gear and to follow the hours in their care contract.

Little Garden Patch Farm states a mission to reconnect kids with nature, to nurture the values of compassion, creativity, and stewardship, and to provide a safe, family home setting where kids can build community and experience a sense of belonging. It is described as a play-based, emergent, developmentally based, primarily child-led program with an emphasis on hands-on, whole child learning, self-discovery, and daily access to a rich outdoor environment to address “nature deficit.” The program notes influences from Maria Montessori, Erik Erickson, Alfred Adler, and Jean Piaget, and its philosophy states that all children deserve to feel safe and valued and to explore their potential in a nurturing, supportive environment.

Little Garden Patch Farm is licensed as an after school care and summer day camp program for school-aged children in kindergarten through 3rd grade, with Community Care License Number 444413332. It has been mentioned in the publication Growing Up in Santa Cruz, welcomes local children and homeschooling families, and offers pick up and transport for Main Street and Soquel Elementary school students. One parent, Linnaea Avenell, describes the property as transformed into “Little Garden Patch Farm” so that children who might otherwise be indoors after school can have child-led time playing outdoors, and she describes watching children recharge by running outside, playing make believe, playing “farm” at the sensory tables, feeding goats with corn husks from the garden, laughing at the chickens, chasing a ball, and joining in story time.

Last updated June 16, 2026.