Kids + Family Offerings
Our venue and hosts Camp Stomping Ground is already a home for imagination, creativity and nature connection. You’ll find areas ready for play additionally to our curated space where parents, kids and their extended families and friends can meet and enjoy the NMMS together in community.
Join us for two screenings of the all ages film short, Microbes! the Musical
Scroll down to learn more about some ongoing or scheduled offerings exclusive for families and kids attending the NMMS.
Aside from what is offered below, you will also find that under certain topics and offerings, we have mentioned which classes and offerings are Family Friendly.
Face painting for the kiddos!
Done by the talented Thao, our featured artist who also created our flyer for this years NMMS.
Thao is an artist, parent, and organizer and is excited to share!
Learn more about their work and offerings HERE
Spore Explorers!
Calling all young explorers! Join us on a magical forest adventure to discover the hidden world of mushrooms. We'll use our super-senses to search for fungi and learn about the amazing "Wood Wide Web"—a secret mycelial network that helps trees talk to each other underground!
We'll practice being "forest friends" by collecting mushrooms respectfully, then we'll get creative! You'll get to sketch your favorite finds and catch real spores to make your very own living art prints.
On this guided forest exploration, we will use our senses to observe mushrooms and the subtle magic of the mycelial network that connects the trees and soil beneath our feet.
Children will learn to identify the incredible diversity of fungal shapes, from delicate gills to sturdy brackets. We will practice respectful foraging, collecting mushrooms to observe their unique textures and forms. As we cultivate a sense of reverence for fungi, we will settle into a creative session to sketch our findings and capture spores to create living art prints.
Come ready to spark your curiosity and see the forest floor with new eyes. For children of all ages and their caregivers. Please accompany any child under 6 years of age.
Your Spore Guide:
Naima Penniman
Naima Penniman is a freedom-forging futurist rooted in her ancestors’ brilliance. She is a devotee of seeds, a soulful story teller, a multidimensional artist, movement builder, medicine grower, healer, and educator. Life-long lover and defender of the Earth, Naima dedicates her creativity and community-building skills to regenerate practices towards planetary interdependence.
Naima serves as the Director of Education at SOUL FIRE FARM, where she equips a returning generation of Black, Brown and Indigenous farmers with the skills needed to reclaim leadership in the food system and chart dignified futures in relationship to land. She is the Co-Founder of WILDSEED, a BIPOC-led, land-based community focused on ecological collaboration, transformative justice, and intergenerational responsibility.
Published in All We Can Save, We Are Each Other’s Harvest, Poetry As Spellcasting, Farming While Black, A Darker Wilderness, Black Earth Wisdom and Semillas, Naima is a visionary poet whose performances have inspired thousands of people and movements across the world through the groundbreaking work of CLIMBING POETREE. Originating member of the Black healers collective, HARRIET’S APOTHECARY, and founder of the Haitian resilience project, AYITI RESURRECT, Naima is devoted to cultivating collaborations that elevate the healing of our earth, our bodies, our communities, lineages and descendants.
Finding friends in Fungi!
Fungi Friends: Growing Mushrooms at Home
Ages 4–12 · Drop in anytime during the two-hour sessions(Saturday + Sunday mornings)
Mushrooms aren't just something you find — they're something you can raise, feed, and check on like any other creature in the garden. This is an open-flow session with stations to move between at your own pace, so come when it suits you and stay as long as it holds them. Kids will play games that show how mycelium eats and spreads, make prints and paintings with reishi, build a little gnome home in a wine cap bed, and stuff a straw bag for oysters. The wine cap and oyster projects go home with you so you can watch them myceliate, and fruit!
Your Funguy Friend!
Steve Gabriel
Steve Gabriel is an ecologist, farmer, educator, and author based in the Finger Lakes of New York. Along with his family, he stewards Wellspring Forest Farm, growing mushrooms and experimenting with agroforestry systems while healing the land for the past 15 years. His curiosity stems from a love for the woods, the desire to see humans heal and reconnect, and the intersection of the practical and spiritual dimensions of farming. Steve is the author of Silvopasture (2019), co-author of Farming the Woods (2014), and author of the forthcoming The Integrated Mushroom Farmer (Spring 2027). When not farming or writing, he enjoys teaching, working with youth, playing drums, and spending time in the lakes, streams, and woods he calls home.
Exploring Types of Mushrooms for ages 4 - 12
Learners will listen to "on a mushroom day" book play a mushroom matching game and talk about mushroom characteristics, then explore dehydrated mushroom examples
Avery Stempel
Avery is a mushroom farmer, educator, poet, and community organizer. He has been filling the New York Capital Region with fresh fungi for 6 years since opening Collar City Mushrooms. Food, medicine, building materials, art, and compost can all come from growing mushrooms. He loves to intertwine as many of these facets as possible into his workshops, classes, and performances. He teaches learners interested in mushrooms through library programs, forest walks, and various classroom environments.
Expect more Kids and Family offerings to be rolling throughout the weekend!
There will be a designated family camping, parking and activity area where families can gather during the NMMS.
