Hello,

Welcome to Real Red Riding Hoods where we offer fully outdoor forest school, as well as music, arts and science home school enrichment programs. Our homeschool enrichment programs are open year around.

Our programs are mixed-age programs where children have opportunities to learn, as well as free play and socialize with friends.

To get the best of both worlds we strongly encourage to enroll your child both in a forest school program and arts and science program. Most family do at least 2 days a week, which gives the children consistent socialization with their friends. But you can enroll for any number of days that suits best your family’s needs.

Please scroll down for details on each program.

Our 2022-2023 programs

Forest school program

Our forest school is a year-around nature immersion homeschool enrichment program for children, where we spend outdoors the entire length of the program in all weather.

During program’s hours children do a hike, play at a creek, explore, do a nature lesson and once a month we do rock climbing.

Our nature lessons are aimed at educating the children about the natural world around them, as we believe that understanding brings about both safety in the outdoors, and appreciation of all the majestic creatures sharing the world with us. To see some of our learning topics of the past years check out our blog.

Activities

Our forest school program regular activities include:

• Hiking
• Nature learning lessons
• Free play and exploration
• Rock climbing once a month with certified climbing guides

Age

We strongly believe in importance of children meeting and socializing, not just with their peers, but with children of a wide range of ages. To ensure age diversity of the group currently we only have spots available for the children 6+ years old at either location.

Days, hours and locations

For 2022-2023 school year our forest school nature immersion days are:

• Tuesdays , 8:45am-1:15pm at Central and South Colorado Springs
• Every other Friday, 9:20am-1:20pm at Central and Northern Colorado Springs, Monument, Palmer Lake areas

Rock climbing

In addition to our hikes and free play in the mountains our program also does regular rock climbing classes for children. Rock climbing we partner with professional certified rock climbing guides from Front Range Climbing company.

Music + Arts + Science program

To compliment our forest school programs, where children spend their entire days outdoors, we also offer to homeschooling families a day dedicated to music, arts and science. These activities are offered at our school house — a private property serving exclusively for the program, and which isn’t anyone’s residence. Throughout the day the children alternate between the lessons and free play with their friends.

Activities and curriculum

Throughout the day all children alternate between the following activities:

• Free play with friends
• Music lessons — available as individual or group lessons. Our music teacher is a professional multi-instrumental musician and composer. Your child could chose and instrument to focus on (piano, guitar, ukulele).
• Music + Science group lessons — we practice project-based learning, so our art and science lessons are inter-related. For example, as we were learning about human anatomy we also practiced building a human skeleton out of clay. Or as we learned about World Geography children also learned to draw animals, did a watercolor painting, and even made a play-dough model of a continent.

The curriculum for the current trimester could be found here.

Daily flow

• Arrival
• Free play until 10am
• Snack
• Lessons alternating with free play. Each child participates in a music lesson (private or group lessons are available), and a group arts+science lesson.

Days, hours

Our music, arts and science program is available on the following days:

• Mondays, between 8:45am-2:15pm
• Thursday, between 8:45am-2:15pm

Location

The music, arts and science homeschool enrichment program takes place at our Palmer Lake school house and is located within 25-30 minutes drive from Briargate, Rockrimmon, Cordera or Wolf Ranch areas. And it is also great location for folks living in Monument, Larkspur and Perry Park.