At the Earth Lodge, children, bridgers and teens will be assisted and guided every day by qualified people who will take care of them in accordance with their different age.

CHILDREN LODGE
This is the space where children, between 3 and 9, come to know the SMSD teachings in the form of creative play and to approach with simplicity life in a community. Children will experience practically the 4 worlds of Grandmother Earth (mineral, plants, animals and humans) and the 4 elements. They will learn new ways to contact Water, to respect the Earth, to dance freely in the Air, to sing and listen to stories around the camp Fire.

They will receive short and interesting basic teachings in order to be able to share the experience of their parents and to access a variety of materials to express their innate creativity. Every day they will have a space dedicated to learning songs of the Sweet Medicine and to playing the “big” drum.The Children Lodge offers all participants the opportunity to express themselves freely in a protected space in a simple and natural way.

BRIDGERS LODGE
Boys and girls between 10 and 13 are no longer children but they are not yet adolescents. The Earth Lodge has a particular care for this age and involves them in specific and creative activities that will stimulate their curiosity and their willingness to build deep bonds. The Natural environment offers a lot of opportunities: a river where to go swimming, a track for orienteering, the “ challenging tests” in nature for the daring ones, who will confront their limitations and increase their self confidence. They will be guided by qualified staff to confront themselves with their limits and to increase their self confidence.

TEEN LODGE
Adolescents between 13 and 18 will camp together and will face their first ceremonial experiences.

The teen lodge is the space where boys and girls meet during the Earth Lodge. They will have their ceremonies in nature, receive teachings and engage with peers and adults, but mostly they will have their own particular Rite of Passage.

Adolescence is more than any other time in life a phase of great transformations that involve their entire beings. Not only their body changes, their mind, emotions, spirit change. Here they will meet the opposite sex and sexuality. Our society is not equipped with tools to help them live consciously all this, therefore often they find themselves alone to face their own contradictions and difficulties. It is in this extremely delicate age that boys and girls form their vision of life, their character and their individuality. And in this time they need to be accompanied and sustained in understanding who they are and being able to enter the world as adults.

The Rites of Passage are all that. They allow students to live and be aware of the transformation, of their power , their qualities and talents. They help the adolescents to incorporate changes that occur in their whole being in order to heal the wounds of childhood and to accept their responsibilities as adults. Through the ceremonies, teens are confronted with the masculine and feminine energies and learn how to have good relations with the opposite sex without losing their sense of self.