Nature Summer Camps

We are currently enrolling for 2025 summer camps! Email us for more information and to register!

[email protected]

Growing Up Green will be offering 6 weeks of 3-day summer camps (weeks of June 2 & 23, July 14 & 28, and August 11 & 18.) Hours are Monday & Tuesday 9am-1pm and Wednesday 9am- 3pm. Cost per week is $100.  Each week will have a theme we will explore on Monday & Tuesday and then on Wednesday we will take a field trip to local venues related to that week’s theme.

Due to current and former GUG families having priority registration, half of our camps filled up before being opened to the public. Thank you returning families for choosing Growing Up Green programs year after year!

Our 5-acre Nature School campus offers endless opportunities for open-ended play and exploration. Campers will have the opportunity to enjoy the child-led experiences they naturally create as well as lessons surrounding Montana history, animals, plants, and traditions. Roasting food on the campfire, playing in mud kitchens, learning about our environment, meeting the school goats and kunekune pigs, working with tools, assisting in the garden, art experiences, cooperative games/ teamwork activities, and music/movement are just a few of the activities we have planned for camp weeks. We will also take field trips to various places throughout the community.

GUG Nature Camp:

•Provides a supportive, safe learning environment to encourage discovery and experimentation  

•Offers sensory opportunities with live animals, natural objects, artifacts, trail games, outdoor exploration and creative art activities  

•Stimulates cognitive growth and problem-solving skills through hands-on activities, games and discovery-learning in nature  

•Encourages physical motor skills through active learning and play  

•Cultivates social skills and positive self-image through group play and cooperative learning  

•Nurtures self-expression, creativity and reflection  

•Instills respect and appreciation for the natural world

Our curriculum is designed around the following concepts:

1. Place-Based Education to immerse children in local landscape, heritage, and culture. We facilitate a deeper understanding of local ecology and community-learning through place-based education, inviting children to establish an ongoing relationship with the world we share, and those we share it with.
2. Unstructured purposeful and productive nature play to provide children space to create their own experience. This involves using loose parts to support imaginative play with items that can be combined, moved, pulled apart and creatively put back together. Sit spots and swings are encouraged to quietly observe the natural world and take a break from movement activities.
3. Natural learning centers are available throughout the property to encourage imaginative/dramatic play experiences and enforce math, literacy, science, language arts, social studies, art, and social/emotional learning. 

Hike with your littles & bigs! Kinderpack carriers available for infants through preschoolers!