Woolly Bears

Half Day Program in Holliday Park
Ages 3-4

Program Overview

New this school year! We welcome our littlest explorers, our Woolly Bears (ages 3-4), to the White Pine family.

White Pine’s Woolly Bears (ages 3-4) spend their days on explorations throughout Holliday Park as we exercise key components of our curriculum: free play, social and emotional learning, resilience, self-empowerment, and nature immersion. Our highly-trained, experienced instructors support their learning throughout the whole school year.

Our Woolly Bears program is an alternative to traditional preschool programs. We balance lots of free play with guided nature lessons using our unique, hands-on curriculum that focuses on deep connection with nature. We practice core routines throughout the year: crafting, wood splitting, sit spot, scouting, cooking, free play, tracking, foraging, plant identification, storytelling, fire-starting, bird language, and so much more.

Program Location

Our Woolly Bears program is located at Holliday Park, famous for it’s amazingly cared-for public land and one of Indianapolis’ oldest and best city parks. We explore the beautiful woods, hills, creeks, and ravines along the shoreline of the White River to connect your little ones to Mother Nature.

Through our partnership with the park management team at Holliday Park, we have the safety of a private, fenced-in space, lovingly called “Secret Base Camp”. A trail from this space goes directly into the established trail system of the park, where we use the whole 94 acres of breathtaking green space.

And what do we find when we adventure? Pawpaw trees, nettle, crawdads, sunfish, sticks, turtles, red-tailed hawks, mud, burdock, skunk cabbage, rocks, dogwood trees, and so much more.

Program Structure

Woolly Bears (ages 3-4) meet from 9:00am-11:30am on either Wednesdays or Fridays (some families choose both days!).

We meet at a consistent location, with the same group of peers and teachers through the whole school year. We have a teacher-to-student ratio of 1:5. We have 6 units per school year, centered around the changing of the seasons. Many families choose to stay the entire 6 units each year, but it is not required.

We are outside 99% of the time, with students only going inside in the case of restroom breaks, extreme heat or cold, or severe weather threats.