Whew! What a wonderful & fun time we had for our first year of Singing Nettle Forest Stewards!

Thank you for your patience while I am playing catch-up – a lot has happened over the past several months, and not to worry, you won’t be missing anything! 🙂

I will provide some of the greatest highlights we’ve had here at our small-knit forest school / learning program:

1. One of our stewards caught a fish with her bare hands on the first day back from Winter break (in January 2025)!!!! Incredibly impressive!!
2. We celebrated the birthday of one of our stewards by having a generously sponsored field trip to the Children’s Museum, then a generous sponsored lunch at Cossettas in St Paul! 🙂
3. We had a steward “Farmer’s Market”, in which each steward presented what their interests are or what they wanted to sell! This was at the end of the school year. For example, some students sold origami, and others sold handmade potholders! 🙂
4. Our class had a few guest “pets”, including 2 baby chicks named Cloudy and Pecky, and the other guest was a beautiful white rabbit named Feet! 🙂
5. We had 2 special guests join us during our class time: one was a Lithuanian mother named Violeta who specializes in knitting and crocheting (and taught knitting and crochet to the class!), and the other was a woman named Elizabeth who gave a presentation on Peru, which included special purple corn drinks and Peruvian candy! 🙂
6. We built and played a game called “Community”, in which everyone contributes or has a role in the community (i.e., there is a “doctor” in the forest to heal townspeople, there is a banker, a home / fort builder, etc.) 🙂
7. We built box forts and other forts! 🙂
8. We helped out at the beekeeping store next door! 🙂
9. We had a foraging scavenger hunt!
10. We had nature-based projects and presentations about:
    • Hibernation
    • Migration
    • Brumation
    • Adaptation
11. And Spanish-based projects and presentations about:
    • Family, Food, and all Things from Mexico!
    • Animals in the Arizona Area – Coyotes, vultures, etc.!
    • Mexican-American War
12. Lunches outside, even with frigid temperatures! 🙂
13. Visit to the Oakdale Nature Preserve, Bell Museum, and more!
14. Witnessing the different seasons around our stream next door – from flooding, different frogs, fish, and other activity!
15. Dissecting owl pellets!
16. And so much more! 🙂

Thank you so much for your contributions to making it such a great first school year with Singing Nettle Forest Stewards!!!!

We had a fun & special Summer Picnic Celebration at the Silver Lake park in North St Paul, with the funds that were made from our “Farmer’s Market”! 🙂

More updates:

We are preparing for our Singing Nettle Forest Stewards 2025 – 2026 School / Program Year!!!!

New features include:

• We are now opening and offering THREE days (Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and select Thursdays!)
• We will be primarily focusing on reading about Mushrooms, Insects, Bugs, Tracking, and so much more! 🙂
• There are so many crabapples at our crabapple tree at school – we might try to make crabapple applesauce! 🙂
• We are excited to incorporate songs about Spanish!

Here are photos from our FIRST incredible 2024 – 2025 School Year Journey: