Remnants of a herpetology workshop lay scattered across a high-top workbench in Allyson Speake’s classroom. Speake cleared the table’s paint-splattered surface, save for a small wooden bowl of magnifying glasses.
At Tanglewood Hollow, tidying up after activities like a snakeskin shed lab comes with the territory.
“This place really brings together everything that I love,” she said. “Science and education. I’m passionate about working with young kids and igniting a wonder and curiosity in them.”
Speake founded the natural science learning program in 2014, writing and illustrating a series of guides and curricula designed to make science more fun and accessible, with the name Tanglewood Hollow serving as a heartfelt connection to her roots.
“My grandfather was a naturalist. Tanglewood Hollow is what he called his home. It was a beautiful, wild place that I grew up,” Speake said. “I wanted to bring this unique experience to the community.”
She began selling her written work online. Then, in early 2023, she acquired a cozy, two-room location at 93 Storrs Street, making it the program’s new home. Speake transformed the front room of the building into a naturalist store and the back room into a classroom, thrifting furniture, painting walls and crafting shelves with help from her family. They celebrated the building’s grand opening in March 2023 before eventually converting the front retail space into a classroom as well.
Since then, Speake has led seasonal science classes and multi-day programs for children, teens and adults, who can pay to enroll in structured sessions or stop by informally to say hello and play around. The center functions as a “third space,” offering a place beyond home, school or work to engage with the natural world, according to Speake.
Using items from the former Nature Discovery Center in Warner, Speake has curated an immersive learning environment to accompany her curricula.
“When we did our grand opening a couple of years ago, Nature Discovery Center volunteers came to see if we’d be interested in checking it out before they had to leave their space,” she said. “They had asked for us to take as much of their collection as we were able to. I’m so glad that we were able to save it all for the community.”
Now, the shelves at Tanglewood Hollow are lined with taxidermied animals and jars of wet specimens acquired from the center in Warner. Elements such as a sensory table filled with plastic dinosaur bones and an indoor treehouse scaled down for toddlers enrich the program’s experiential learning approach.
Speake’s hands-on philosophy extends far beyond just the classroom, with field trips to nature sites around New Hampshire further supporting her lessons.
“My favorite thing we’ve done so far is visiting a local vernal pool to study the life that relies on them and record it like a real scientist would,” said Lucy Godsey, 11, of Concord, who has previously taken Speake’s herpetology and mammalogy courses.
Nine-year-old Sage Bissonnette, another frequent Tanglewood Hollow visitor from Concord, also expressed his appreciation for the program’s activities and offerings.
“Oh, I love it. I love that other school kids can come. They can have fun. They can have snacks,” Bissonnette said. “And they can hold animals. It’s fun to pet the snakes there.”
With help from the snakes and other classroom companions like gray tree frogs and a leopard gecko, Tanglewood Hollow seeks to demonstrate how harmless nature can be.
“There’s a very big disconnect with families, kids, and adults and nature,” Speake said. “A lot of people are scared of it. We forget that we’re also part of the natural world. The heart behind this is to learn about the environment and be more comfortable with it so that we can foster that love of nature.”
Tanglewood Hollow is located at 93 Storrs Street in Concord and is open Wednesdays and Fridays from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., Thursdays from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m., and Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
For more information about Tanglewood Hollow, visit https://www.tanglewoodhollow.com/.
Brendilou Armstrong can be reached at barmstrong@cmonitor.com