Every morning, a group of children heads straight for the woods. They balance on fallen logs, arrange pebbles into careful patterns and pause to examine frost melting off leaves. There is no rush to rotate from station to station and no bell signaling the next block of time. Instead, the forest sets the rhythm.
This is the Asheville Farmstead School, a nature-based early childhood program tucked along Morgan Cove Road in Candler.
Founded in 2016 by executive director Lauren “Lala” Roddick-Brown, the school grew out of her growing concern about the academic pressure and screen saturation reshaping early childhood…