Located on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, CedarRoot School is a folk school committed to keeping rural and wilderness skills alive through hands on, place based education. They offer youth and adult programs that treat the forest, shore, and fields as the classroom, inviting people of all ages to slow down, pay attention, and build practical skills that last.
“We view nature as our greatest teacher and the outdoors as our classroom.”
CedarRoot’s outdoor program education is rigorous, joyful, and deeply relational all at once so that people learn to feel at home outside.
In Saplings Forest and Farm Nature Studies, four to eight year olds explore forest and farm spaces through play, story, and simple wilderness skills. Weekly Nature Studies programs weave shelter building, fire making, plant identification, and wildlife tracking into teamwork and peer support.
Adult classes invite people into serious study, playful experiment, and shared responsibility for local ecosystems with wildlife tracking and bird language to bone anatomy and mushroom identification.
CedarRoot represents the kind of work Rooted Sonshine loves to highlight: organizations that notice what their community needs and respond creatively. They invest in both children and adults so learning continues across generations. They see land, plants, and animals not as backdrops but as teachers and neighbors.
Their tagline reads, “We are all Powered by the Sun.” A reminder that we share everything, and that education can honor those shared sources of life.
Are you are working to design or strengthen outdoor, place based, or community rooted programs? Spend time with CedarRoot’s model to spark practical ideas.