Muddy River Nature School is a small, land-based community  for children growing up in the prairie city. We operate with a North Dakota childcare license for children ages 2-6. Our days are shaped by wind and weather, muddy boots and birdsong, by noticing the small lives that share our streets, trails, and riverbanks. 

This is not a program that "goes outside". 
This is a place where the outdoors is the classroom, calendar, and the co-teacher.

Children here learn the names of the birds that live along side them. 
They learn to listen to their own bodies and feelings. 
They learn to care for shared spaces, to tend small living things, to move through the world with autonomy and reverence. 

We live by seasons and moon cycles. 
We pause at solstice and equinox.
We honor the quiet rites of booming that mark a child's passage through early life.

Our days are slow, intentional, and relational, reciprocal, and deeply connected.

This is childhood lived under canopy and sky. 

Windy. Muddy. Still. Climbing. Alive.

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For families who already live close to the Earth, this will feel familiar.
For families who are longing to return to something older, slower, and truer, this may feel like remembering.

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If you feel a quiet recognition here, you are in the right place to continue.