Each year, Friends School of Minnesota seventh and eighth graders spend a week at Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center in Finland, Minnesota. We do this trip to learn about the natural environment of the area and to build community among ourselves.

We spend the week taking classes. This year’s classes were animal signs, orienteering, ropes course, rock climbing, wetlands, and lake study. We do lots of other activities such as capture the flag in the woods, the astronomy tower, night hikes and sunrise hikes, team building activities with dorm groups, singing along with Shane on his guitar, nail painting, and henna tattoos by some of the 7/8 girls on practically everyone, and s’mores by the campfire. We also went to a family farm and learned about sustainable farming. The kids did some service work of digging up a field and then they played whiffle ball.

Getting to know each other so well in the fall provides us a solid foundation for the whole school year.