Mountain Kids!

OUR MISSION Mountain Kids! is an outdoor education and adventure program for children based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. We aim to foster a sense of community and personal challenge, while instilling a love of nature and all that it provides. WE OFFER We offer hands-on adventures in nature through exploration, imaginative play, games, stories, songs, art, hiking, natural history, backpacking, mountain biking and good-old fashioned fun! For children ages 5-12, and 13-16 for our Counselor- in-Training program. OUR HISTORY Mountain Kids! began in 2009 out of a mother/educator’s desire to connect her children and their peers with nature. With a borrowed “Adventure Van” meeting in their backyard, a handful of children and adults began to play in the mountains three days per week during the hot month of June. Fifteen years later, our community has grown, and we have served more than 4000 children from Santa Fe and beyond. OUR PHILOSOPHY With the current trends of nature deficit disorder and our highly scheduled, technology-driven lives, Mountain Kids! aims to hearken back to simpler times where child-centered play in nature was the norm. BENEFITS Mountain Kids! aims to unplug our children and “Leave No Child Inside.” Children who play in the natural world enjoy a wealth of benefits, including better physical and mental health and improved focus and concentration. OUR VISION Our goal is to reach all children in Santa Fe and beyond, helping to create a healthy new generation of stewards that care about the earth and each other. OUR PROGRAMS Mountain Kids offers 12 weeks of summer camp, school field trips, and out-of-school time programs. With past Outdoor Equity Funds, we developed LOLA (Local Outdoor Learning Adventures); a Teacher Training to support teachers to take learning outside (this was especially important during Covid and a great launch point for continued outdoor learning). As a part of LOLA, we led students from El Camino Real Academy (ECRA) and Nina Otero on field trips to our local mountains. Our goal is to continue to work with students from ECRA during all four seasons as they grow. Our goal is to measure the impact of seasonal outdoor learning throughout their elementary years. As a part of the program, we encourage parents to join the field trips to develop a culture of outdoor play for entire families. To this end, we are offering a free picnic and day of outdoor games and hikes to families at Hyde State Park in April 2023. This will be a part of the Santa Fe City Nature Challenge and parents will be offered a free gas card for participating. In 2023 we developed a partnership with Communities in Schools and Reading Quest to get their students out to play. We have developed a Friday after school program to connect these kids to nature every week. This program is privately funded and will launch in January 2024.