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School Year 2023 - 2024

FOrest Friends Preschool program

Three-day Forest Friends Preschool Program for 3 year olds

Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays 9:15 - 1:15

Forest Friends Later Preschool/TK/Kindergarten program

Three or Four day Kindergarten Forest Program for 4 - 5 year olds

Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays 9:30 - 2:45

Both classes are led on Open Space lands in the Fairfax vicinity and San Geronimo Valley

Enroll

HOW TO ENROLL:

Whenever you are ready, just hit the button below to start the Forest Friends application.  After review of the application, if we have a spot in a class that might work for your child, for the desired starting date, we will contact you to let you know we have a spot available. You then pay an application fee of $75 and we will set up an admissions interview between the director and one or both parents.  If everyone is in agreement that your family and this program are a good fit, then you can pay your deposit and enroll your child.  Please allow up to several weeks for the processing of applications.

Scholarships

We want these programs to be available to all families who desire to be there and are aligned with our philosophies and policies.  A limited number of partial scholarships may become available when funds are raised. Click HERE to fill out our scholarship application.

First People’s Scholarship

This program is based on a deep connection to the land of this place, west Marin county, which we acknowledge is traditional Coast Miwok land. We want to honor the first people of this land and support cultural healing by offering a significant and automatic scholarship to any child that is descended from any of the tribes of the Bay Area and is tribally registered or tribally identified. Please contact us if your child fits this criteria.

Media

We ask parents to agree to a no-to-low media policy. We realize it is difficult to completely avoid or eliminate screentime for children in our era, but we have noticed from our own experience the detrimental effect that media can have on child development and on the social dynamics within a group.  If your chid is exposed to much media, the whole group will likely have to participate in the detox process that occurs when we come to the forest. We would like the parents in our program to agree to optimize their child's development, as well as supporting our group dynamics, by protecting your child from media exposure altogether, if possible. At the very least we ask you to limit screen time to a few hours or less a week, and never within 24 hours before coming to our program.  Listening to recorded stories is a good alternative if you need to keep a child occupied for a time. This allows the child to make their own pictures and use their imagination (although it is still not as good for them as being read to by a real and loving human being).  We can recommend many recorded stories--just ask!