In Fall 2025, Wonder Woods plans to enroll our first teenager students, and launch our pilot year of Wonder Woods Teen Program for school year 2025-2026. This program seeks to fill a void in the local forest school landscape; uphold our belief that all kids need spaces to play, socialize, take risks, and j9.  grow in nature; and remind us that teens are still kids! 

 

This program is a work-in-progress and will continue to evolve based on the needs of the teens enrolled and their families, as well as our experiences. We envision this program to begin with teens who are 13-15 at the start of September 2025. 

 

The Teen Program will still prioritize the forest school philosophies followed by Wonder Woods of child-led, play-based, and emergent curriculum, all taking place in the natural world found in Chicago. We still want the teens to play with their friends, and have fun! Notable adaptations will include our suggestions of tracks/topics for play/study/learning, and collaborative pathways for extensions with the enrolled teens and their families’ approach to their education outside of the woods to connect to their “projects” and play in the woods. 

​

​

**Please note, we do not intend to enforce deadlines or otherwise impose our own expectations for “study” onto the teen students. 

• We still want this program to be fun and primarily led by the student’s desires and interests. 

• We see our role as advisory, supporting, and supervisory in many of the same ways that we operate our current 0-12 programming. 

• We envision helping the students with goal-setting and project management, and checking in with the students and their families throughout the year for progress updates, but our intent is not to add stress to teens as they go about this “work” that is still based in play.

• ​

Our program rotates its location (for ecological preservation reasons) between LaBagh and Bunker Hill Forest Preserves.