Spring River School

06/18/2026

🌿 A New Chapter for Paula 🌿
For the past several years, Paula English has been a driving force behind so much of what makes our community special. Through her service as Parent Council President, she has helped families find connection, supported volunteers, strengthened traditions, and generously given her time and heart to Spring River.
We are delighted to share that Paula is stepping into a new role as Volunteer Coordinator. In this position, she will help nurture volunteer engagement across our programs, support community events and festivals, strengthen parent leadership, and create meaningful opportunities for families to contribute their gifts in service to our schools.
Paula will also help guide and onboard incoming Parent Council leaders, ensuring a smooth transition and continued success for this important work.
At Spring River, we believe that the way we care for one another is the truest measure of a community. We are grateful for the care, dedication, and connection Paula has brought to our community and look forward to seeing that work continue in her new role.
💚🌿

06/16/2026

🌲 Build. Create. Explore. Discover. 🌲 With Miss Alyssa & Friends!

Week 4 of Spring River's Nature & Art Summer Camp invites children into a world of outdoor adventure, creativity, and hands-on learning through our Bushcraft & Primitive Skills theme.

Throughout the week, campers will:
🌿 Build woodland shelters
🌿 Learn useful knots
🌿 Create nature-based crafts
🌿 Explore the natural world
🌿 Work together to solve challenges

As children work with their hands and imaginations, they develop confidence, resilience, creativity, and practical skills that will stay with them long after camp ends.

☀️ Special Event: Mini Midsummer Festival
On Tuesday, campers will celebrate the season with a joyful Mini Midsummer Festival inspired by traditional Scandinavian festivities, featuring games, crafts, and midsummer fun.

📍 Dutton Island
📅 June 22–26
🕘 9:00 AM–2:00 PM
🍃 Grades K–5

Tuition:
🌾 $325/week
🌾 $295/week for Spring River families

Drop-in options available for currently enrolled families only.

Registration is open now: springriverschool.org/summercamp2026

06/15/2026

🌿 WE'RE GROWING — AND LOOKING FOR THE RIGHT PEOPLE TO GROW WITH US. 🌿
Spring River School is expanding, and we're seeking caring, energetic, and dependable Teaching Assistants to join our team for the 2026–27 school year.
This isn't a typical classroom position.
Our Teaching Assistants spend their days outdoors alongside children—supporting academic learning, guiding nature exploration, assisting with artistic activities, facilitating games, and helping students develop confidence, resilience, and a love of learning.
As our programs continue to grow, we're looking for individuals who:

🍃 Love working with children
🍃 Enjoy being outdoors in all seasons
🍃 Bring warmth, patience, and flexibility to their work
🍃 Thrive as part of a collaborative team
🍃 Want meaningful work that makes a difference
Are you interested in Waldorf education? Whether you're already familiar with Waldorf methods or simply curious about a more holistic, child-centered approach to learning, we'd love to hear from you. We provide training, mentoring, and professional development to help our team grow.

Experience in education, camps, childcare, homeschooling, youth programs, outdoor education, or related fields is welcomed. Compensation ranges from $18.50–$20.00 per hour based on relevant classroom experience, along with tuition remission and professional development opportunities.

Teaching Assistant Opportunities
• Grades 1–8
• Monday–Thursday
• 2026–27 School Year
• 15% Tuition Remission
• Paid Training & Professional Development
• Atlantic Beach, Florida

Apply online at: springriverschool.org/employment

06/15/2026

🧼🦙 NEW WORKSHOP ALERT! 🦙🧼

Join us Tuesday, June 16th at 9:30 AM for a relaxing morning on the farm! You’ll enjoy a full alpaca tour, feed the herd, and learn how to create your own beautiful felted soap to take home.

✨ Ages 10+
✨ All materials included
✨ $38 per person
✨ Reservations Required

Space is limited!

📞 904-651-1448
🌐 ShadyRestAlpacas.com

06/14/2026

"The love of gardening is a seed once sown that never dies.”
~Gertrude Jekyll, one of the most influential garden designers and horticulturists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

🌱
This garden is our plot in the Dutton Island Community Garden, a wonderful community resource managed by Dig Local Network. Through their stewardship, local families have the opportunity to cultivate food, flowers, and connection to the earth.

For our students, gardening is much more than planting seeds. It is a living classroom where children develop responsibility, patience, observation skills, and an appreciation for the rhythms of nature. As they care for growing plants, they experience firsthand that meaningful growth requires time, attention, and perseverance.

We are grateful to Dig Local for making this opportunity possible and for helping cultivate a stronger connection between children, community, and the natural world.

🌱🌿☀️

06/13/2026

⚒️Building More Than a House

This week’s camp brought one of those wonderful moments that perfectly captures the spirit of childhood.

A few campers discovered some extra pallets, concrete blocks, and loose building materials and immediately began imagining possibilities. Before long, they had organized themselves into a team and were hard at work designing and constructing their own house. There were discussions about structure, problem-solving when pieces didn’t fit quite right, and plenty of cooperation as they worked toward a shared vision.

In Waldorf education, these moments are every bit as valuable as a planned lesson. Working with the hands helps children develop spatial thinking, creativity, perseverance, and practical problem-solving skills. As they build, they are learning through direct experience rather than instruction alone.

Rudolf Steiner spoke about the importance of educating the head, heart, and hands. When children engage in meaningful physical work, their thinking becomes more grounded, their will becomes stronger, and their sense of capability grows.

What may look like simple play is actually deep learning.

Through this project, children were developing:

• Engineering and design thinking
• Problem-solving and critical thinking
• Cooperation and teamwork
• Spatial awareness and planning
• Perseverance and adaptability
• Initiative and leadership
• Confidence in their own abilities
• The satisfaction of creating something real with their hands

And perhaps most importantly, they experienced the joy of transforming an idea into reality.

06/12/2026

🌿 NOW HIRING: Movement & Games Teacher 🌿

Spring River School is seeking a dynamic Movement & Games Teacher to join our Waldorf-inspired outdoor homeschool enrichment program for the 2026–27 school year.

This part-time position works with students in Grades 1–8, leading imaginative games, cooperative challenges, rhythm and movement activities, and outdoor experiences that support healthy physical, social, and emotional development.

📍 Atlantic Beach, Florida
📅 Monday–Thursday | 1:00–3:00 PM
📝 3 hours paid planning time each week
💰 $25/hour

The ideal candidate enjoys working with children outdoors, values developmentally appropriate movement education, and brings energy, creativity, and leadership to the school community.

Additional opportunities may include developing after-school sports teams based on family interest and program growth.

Apply through the online application on our website : springriverschool.org/employment

06/12/2026

Amazing!

How can nature programs better meet the needs of the communities they serve?

Throughout her career, Carol Peralta has worked to answer this question. After graduating college, Carol was hired at Los Angeles nonprofit Wildwoods. She was only supposed to deliver an established presentation about water conservation to classrooms. But she saw an opportunity for more engagement — so she transformed the program from a one-time presentation into a series of visits.

Over the next decade, she worked on every program that Wildwoods offers, always following her philosophy, which guided her to introduce bilingual programming and build out “train-the-trainer” programs.

Today, she is the future Executive Director of Wildwoods and the recent recipient of the 2026 Richard Louv Prize for Innovation in Nature Connection.

Carol’s singular story, talents, education and capacity for compassion make her uniquely situated to design environmental education programs with heart, forging children’s connections with both nature and community.

Read more about Carol’s work and impact here: https://www.childrenandnature.org/resources/fnn-2026-richard-louv-prize-winner-carol-peralta-helps-communities-heal-and-connect-through-nature/



🌴 Help us keep sharing stories about children and nature. Support us at bit.ly/forchildrenandnature. 🌆✨

06/12/2026

Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath: "Even in schools, it doesn't matter what ...