They plan it
Scope, materials, who does what, and a deadline they set themselves and then have to live with.
Programs·Kindergarten & ElementaryAges 5 – 6, currently through 1st grade
Kindergarten & first grade in Winter ParkI can take my ideas further.
Children are ready for greater independence, deeper investigations and more complex challenges. Our Kindergarten and elementary experience combines strong academic foundations with real chances to research, design, create, collaborate, communicate and apply what they know. They are not just learning answers. They are learning how to think.
What a day holds
By now the child runs the cycle. The teacher’s job is to make the problems worthy of them.
Investigations over six weeks
Planned, documented and revised by the children, with checkpoints rather than instructions.
Reading and math with teeth
Direct, sequential teaching of reading and number every day — and then immediately used inside the investigation.
Teams with roles
Researcher, builder, recorder, presenter. Rotated, so no child hides in the same job all year.
A public presentation
Work is shown to an audience beyond the classroom, which changes how carefully it is made.
Under the play
What we are actually building
Small school, small classes, and a curriculum written in this building — which means it changes when a child needs it to.
Independence
The child sets the plan, notices the problem, and asks for the adult when the adult is genuinely needed.
Documentation
Notebooks, measurements, sketches, dated attempts. A year of thinking you can hold in your hands at pickup in May.
Transfer
The real test: using the cycle on a problem nobody set them. It shows up at home first, usually inconveniently.
Who runs the project
By now, they do.
The teacher still sets the challenge. Almost everything after that has moved across the table. Open each notebook tab.
They document it
They present it
They revise it
A lesson from this room
The Water Question ran six weeks and started with a leaking outdoor tap. It ended with a measured comparison of three collection methods, a written recommendation to the director, and a change to how the courtyard is watered.
"I have a theory about that."
The practical part.
Enrollment is capped by classroom, and elementary places are the tightest we have. Currently serving through 1st grade, growing a year at a time.
Programs & ages
Every age, one method. Pick a room.
Come watch them think.
Twenty minutes in this room on an ordinary weekday morning will tell you more than this page can.
Before you ask
The three things every family asks for first.
Scholarships, what we stand for in writing, and the dates. All of it here, none of it behind a form.
Paying for it
Scholarship families welcome
We take Step Up For Students and Florida VPK. Send us your Award ID and we handle the EMA enrollment and the quarterly invoicing from our side.
How the funding works →What we stand for
Our Code of Ethics
Nine things owed to every child, five owed to each other, and exactly how to report an adult who breaks them. Training on it is a condition of employment.
Read it — or print it →The dates
School calendar 2026–27
We follow the Orange County Public Schools calendar, so siblings' dates line up. Every closure is on one page — and one button puts the whole year in your phone.
See the year, add to your calendar →