Apple Scouts Nature Immersion Camp

Apple Scouts Nature Immersion Camp is a nonprofit early childhood educational program that focuses on outdoor immersion, Spanish immersion, and nature immersion. Children take part in nature exploration, gardening, environmental education that includes stewardship and justice, social-emotional learning, process art, anti-bias education, and play-based early childhood education. The program uses a Reggio Emilia-inspired, emergent curriculum in which teachers adapt lesson plans to the specific interests, skills, and needs of students, with life skills, literacy, and mathematics woven into all parts of the curriculum and a predictable daily schedule that supports children’s confidence and independence.

• Ages: 5–12 years old
• Schedule: Programs run Monday–Friday, 10am–6pm

Apple Scouts Nature Immersion Camp is part of Apple Playschools, a nonprofit early childhood educational center that offers outdoor immersion and Spanish immersion programs and offers camps on school breaks and in the summer. The organization’s educational mission is to facilitate innovative, play-based early childhood education that promotes interpersonal relationships, equity and inclusion, nature exploration, and environmental stewardship, with a stated biggest focus on social-emotional learning. Its mission states that it embodies inclusion, innovation, and environmental stewardship in entrepreneurship and education in order to make a more equitable world, and its vision is an equitable world where all people are respected as capable, competent, and empowered citizens of the planet.

The leadership team includes Grace Frielink, Director of Apple Scouts Nature Immersion Camp; Leticia Diaz-Gonzalez, Director of Manzanitas Spanish Immersion Playschool (Main Office); Maria Eugenia Peñuelas, Assistant Director of Manzanitas Spanish Immersion Playschool (Main Office); Sarah Friel, Director of Green Apple Garden Upper Playschool; Ashley Giles, Director of Green Apple Garden Lower Playschool; Etta Heisler, Executive Director; and Brittnai Murillo, Development and Communications Manager. One staff member reports nine years of working for the organization. Apple Playschools acknowledges a $775,000 Impact Investment from the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation, which made it possible to open its newest early childhood center, creating 12 new jobs and increasing enrollment capacity by nearly 50%, adding 47 new child care spots.

A parent of Green Apple and Apple Scouts children describes a “loving environment,” a “commitment to nature and diversity,” and children coming home covered in mud with pockets full of leaves, able to give gardening advice and name plants, and experiencing an approach to gender in which boys can wear dresses without it being a big deal and preschoolers understand how to talk about pronouns. The same parent notes that teachers listen to children and that play-based learning respects children’s preschool interests and abilities. An admin staff member describes the program as providing “an environment where love for nature, respect, and empathy rules” and states that this is the main reason for staying with the organization over many years.

Last updated July 17, 2026.