The seeds for Piedmont Forest School were planted in 2018 at Little Creek Park and Greenway in Winston-Salem, NC with the launching of an exciting and edifying summer camp experience for children in the summers of 2019 and 2020.
Piedmont Forest School was founded as a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization in 2020 by Sheri Grace PhD. Sheri brings over 30 years of experience in early childhood special education, making an enriching, inclusive, and therapeutic environment possible.
With the energetic work of our Board of Directors, volunteers, and the families of the children we serve, Piedmont Forest School has been able to grow steadily. With community support, we have been able to use local parks in the Winston-Salem and Greensboro areas as nature play sites and one day hope to have land to call our own.
We keep our class sizes small, a low student to teacher ratio of 5:1, which allows our Learning Partners to be fully present with and for each child’s discoveries. Our Learning Partners are guides who mentor, model, and coach students through positive relationships, interactions, and communications. These trained professionals provide essential emotional support to meet our children’s unique sensory and developmental needs.
We believe that frequent and extended time in nature is essential. The outdoor environment provides a beautifully stimulating learning arena for children of all ages and with our focus being self-directed play in nature, the results in learning are the kind that stick over the long term!
Our Mission
The mission of Piedmont Forest School is to provide to children of all abilities and backgrounds authentic forest school and nature-based education programs which foster the development of the whole child, while engendering in them a love of and a commitment to caring for the natural world.
Our Vision
We envision progressive and equitable educational programs where children of all abilities and backgrounds learn together year-round through creative play while immersed in nature.