We absolutely love and recommend Quiet Heart!!! My daughter (now 8yo) has enjoyed 3 years of various summer outdoor camps and she has had the opportunity to do 2 Quiet Heart summer camps last summer (2018) and 3 this past summer (2019). It has been wonderful to see how much more confident and adept she is in the woods and eager to share her discoveries & knowledge. Our family is already focused on having nature be a part of our daily lives and we try to get outside as much as we can and go on hikes usually once a week. We would love to be doing more and we are appreciative that we can explore so many places here in the PNW. From the moment she started her first camp Fairies, Forts, & Magic Stones with Little Bear she was very engaged. When we would pick her up she would share all of their many adventures and games and want to take us to all the places that she had just explored to tell us all about them. Some of her favorites memories are building fairy villages in the underbrush of a tall tree, splashing through the rivers, making a fairy grocery store, making creations from nature, meeting grandfather cedar, and discovering a barred owl on a branch above her head when she was doing a "sitspot". She was always pretty beat after camp! She wasn't too keen on going to camp when it was raining, but this summer she became more comfortable being in the elements. She would ask to go back to Yost Park over the weekend with my hubby and I so that she could roleplay that she was the instructor and we were the campers. She would then walk us through the process of doing a "sitspot" and perform a guided meditation or explain to us how to play the wolf vs raven game. It was so special to us and she still emulates the instructors of the camps when we are out hiking! The first summer she did the Fairies camp and the Ninja Foxes. Sadly, the Ninja Foxes camp was not as fun for her, because she didn't have very many girls her age to interact and connect with (she has a preference for playing with girls). This summer she did the Fairies, Forts & Magic Stones, Wild Foragers, and Nature Craft camps and she really blossomed! She got to make so many amazing crafts with ingredients from the park. She learned how to make candles with tree sap, sew and dye (with things they had foraged) a pillowcase purse, carve soap stone, and so much more! She was coming home so proud of herself and shared all the details of how she made her creations. Her instructor for 2 of the camps was Rachael and the other camps were Little Bear and she really likes them both. I have found the staff to be insightful, caring, and present (which is most important to me) with the campers. I really appreciate that they have a background in wilderness training and native traditions and blend in their own unique relationship with nature with the rest of the group. She has also connected with several of the assistant instructors and teenagers who volunteer. She told me she wants to attend every summer! Now when we go on hikes, she points out all sorts of things, like alerting me to where nettles are, which is always helpful.
This year we are homeschooling and so we are trying out Quiet Heart's Friday school year camp in Monroe. They have various school year camps at different locations and at different times, but that one worked for our family's schedule. It is a bit of a drive, but the location is beautiful and I love that she is now learning knife skills, how to start & build fires safely (one of her personal interests), Native American traditions & stories, and more. I also appreciate how this particular camp is mixed ages and so she can learn from the older kids as well. Quiet Heart has been a perfect place for our budding naturalist to thrive!
Logistics: she found that Bogs were too heavy for hiking, so we got her waterproof hiking boots (Merrells); she loves her kids version Camelbak (we would put ice in the bladder so that she could have cold water through the day); she also likes having a waterproof pad of paper and colored pencils to do nature drawings during the day; she also preferred a cover for the nipple of her Camelbak so that the mouth piece wouldn't get so dirty; and clothing layers are imperative. read more