Our goal with the Adventures program is to provide a facilitated experience where our younger community members can be exposed, through play, to the natural and agricultural world. Our work focuses on the changing seasons and the opportunities that each offers us. In the fall we can be in the woods catching falling leaves, in the winter we can search for tracks from the active winter animals, and in the spring we can lend a hand with the sugaring season and visit the baby lambs. We strive to fill in the gaps of where our food comes from by offering experiences like planting a seed and harvesting from the garden or hatching eggs and raising baby chicks to join the flock and give us eggs later in their life. We utilize the forest as a way to explore who else is in our community.  

Typical Adventures schedule and examples:

• Free Play - Activities set up in the room are balanced between areas where children can be independent to areas needing more facilitation.  Free play might include washing wool, exploring worms from our wormery, water color painting, seed exploring, taking kernels off an ear of popcorn, and building with blocks.
• Meeting - We clean up the room, gather together to reflect on a previous meeting, and lay out the plan for the rest of our time together. Meetings might include a song, book, or shared activity.
• Bathroom / Wash Up for Snack - During snack time we eat all together, family style.  This is a great time to get know each other. Based on that day’s snack, snack time might include making connections to the farm, a book we’ve read, something that was available during free play, or where we might visit on an outing.
• Outing - We strive to be outside as much as we can, while keeping the weather conditions in mind. Outings might include visiting the animals in the farmyard, harvesting, tasting and playing games in the garden, exploring the woods to learn who shares the space with us and searching for critters under logs, making in the mud kitchen and building our community through the shared process of building a fort.

In order to accommodate the high volume of applicants, each participant may attend only one session per week per season. 

To best manage the volume of applications received each session, we ask applicants to rank the sessions in order of preference and to include as many sessions that may work for their schedule.  We do our absolute best to accommodate either everyone’s first, second, or third choice.

All applicants will be notified of their placement or waitlist status by email. Waitlisted applicants will then be notified by email if a space in a requested session becomes available.

Notification emails will include the placement session, dates and instructions on how to accept the placement. Payment and a completed health form are required to reserve the participants spot.

We strongly recommend adding “registration@shelburnefarms.org” and “jnorris@shelburnefarms.org” to your email contact list to ensure that you’ll receive our email(s) in a timely manner.

Enrollment notification emails will include a link to submit payment online. All payments are due within two weeks of enrollment notification. Payment plans and financial assistance may be available. Please contact registration@shelburnefarms.org to make arrangements or for further questions.

Cancelling an Adventures session is rare. However, if we must cancel we will contact listed guardians via email by 7:00 AM the morning of an Adventures session. For the Winter/Spring sessions we coincide with Shelburne School Systems’ cancellations. Unfortunately, we are not able to provide a refund for cancellations due to weather.

Yes! One of our goals is to provide programs that are accessible to all children. We are able to adapt our programs to meet different needs. Our staff is happy to discuss your child’s needs in order to provide the best possible experience. We have an adaptable stroller to assist children with physical limitations. Please be aware that our facilities are NOT certified nut, dairy or gluten free. However, we do ask families and staff to bring peanut-free meals. We do require a detailed health form for all enrolled participants to assist us in providing a safe experience for everyone.  If you have specific needs that you would like to discuss in addition to the health form please email jnorris@shelburnefarms.org.

No, please pack snacks and a reusable water bottle. In addition, we kindly ask families to pack peanut-free meals. We are sometimes able to provide farm-fresh snacks; such as garden fruits and veggies, farm cheese, fresh bread, or cool treats on hot days as available. Please indicate allergies and dietary restrictions on your child’s health form.

Our tax ID is 03-0229347.