Montessori cosmic education · from a Wairarapa farm
Forty-seven courses and 965 lessons for home-educating families, built in a farm classroom in the Whangaehu Valley and now open to anyone, anywhere. The story runs from the first moment of the universe to the work of your own hands.
Three lessons are open to everyone, in full, with no account needed.
How it began
Montessori on the Farm began as a Montessori day for home-educated children on a working farm in the Whangaehu Valley: a proper prepared environment, mixed ages, real materials, and a whole farm to go out into. Small on purpose, and rural by choice.
The classroom came first
Cosmic education works. Give a six year old the whole universe as a story and they will chase it for months: into rocks, into rivers, into the numbers people invented to count their sheep. We watched it happen at the same table, over and over.
We also learned the limit. A room on a farm in the Whangaehu Valley holds eight children a day. There are home-educating families all over New Zealand who will never drive down our road.
And then the campus
So we built the campus: the whole of the second plane, the same five great stories, the same strands, written out lesson by lesson so a family can sit down at their own table and begin. Forty-seven courses, 965 lessons, and every one of them ends away from the screen with something to build, grow or walk out to.
The farm day is still here, and still small. The campus is how the rest of the country gets in.
Who teaches it
Every lesson on the campus, and every day on the farm, comes from one qualified Montessori teacher who has spent years walking alongside children of this age. Police vetted and first aid trained, and still in the room with the children rather than away from it.
Formally qualified, and teaching the six to twelve years in particular: the plane where cosmic education belongs.
Every lesson was written for this campus, from the ground up and under Julia's direction, for the children in our own room first and then for yours.
The parent course is taught live by Julia, and every family on it gets her on the phone. There is no call centre here, and never will be.
Three ways in
Cosmic education at your own table, for children six to twelve, anywhere in the world. Three lessons are open to everyone with no account needed: How volcanoes work, The whole Earth and Day and Night.
Twelve live sessions online with Julia, one a week for a term, learning to give the lessons yourself. Two phone calls and a monthly clinic included.
The original. A Montessori day for home-educated children on the farm in the Whangaehu Valley, eight children at a time, if you are close enough to drive.
Cosmic education
“The child who has felt a strong love for his surroundings and for all living creatures, who has discovered joy and enthusiasm in work, gives us reason to hope…”
Maria Montessori
Montessori begins with the whole universe and finds the child’s place within it: the sun, the seasons, the soil, and the small green shoot. Out here, that is not a poster on a wall. It is the paddock, the weather, the animals and the night sky, all part of the classroom.