Top Dollar Education For Free

I am passionate about creating memorable, and adventurous learning experiences for children. People follow me to see what cool, accessible places I've taken my own children and the projects we create together.

I began working as a Montessori and Reggio Emilia teacher out of college and took to it like white on rice. Working with my students’ interests, excitement and imaginations, I designed daily creative play investigations to engage them. I loved the free form art and design aspects of Reggio Emilia, allowing children to use materials in whichever way they saw fit—like painting with bubble wrap, for example!

I also enjoyed incorporating facts with fun. For example, when we studied the country of Italy, the kids participated in a grape stomp to celebrate the cultural heritage and learn how food can be used and processed in various ways. Plus they were allowed to get dirty and sticky. Plus they got to live every child’s dream of use their feet to make grape juice!

Since becoming a mother, so many aspects of my work as an alternative education teacher has translated into the way I raise my own children. I have sought out community engagement opportunities for my own children from the beginning. This community engagement might be chatting with passers by at a park where we just so happen to meet a chess master, experiencing the demolition derby at a county fair or being in the middle of a cicada plague and then learning about their life cycle! Even though money has been extremely tight, we were and are still able to see and experience so much. Armed with a good internet connection, a little creativity and enthusiasm, we have a blast adventuring and learning, from constructing weapons with sticks, rocks and masking tape, to making stained glass ornaments, to exploring fine art museums and sculpture gardens. The world is our oyster, and watching my children’s beautiful minds grow, is the Pearl.

I love sharing our adventures and art projects on social media. It seems to inspire my friends and followers to be creative themselves, as well as get out to explore their own communities. It also sparks so many engaging conversations—sharing ideas about new methods and mediums to try, or places to visit.

I think a great way to monetize this, would be to create a membership based database or forum where members can share and peruse places to explore in local communities across the globe, interesting and unusual educational settings to visit or create, as well as a project ideas with supply lists. But let’s be honest, it’s usually the found objects—cardboard boxes, bottles, leftover ribbon, straws and paper towel tubes—that holds a child’s interest the longest. Making sense of these things and finding new ways to be creative with everyday, found objects instill a profound and immeasurable sense of creativity and self awareness. People pay top dollar for these kinds of educations, and it’s truly accessible to everyone. They just need to be reminded! A newsletter with highlights and suggestions on how to make your kids space interesting and engaging for all income levels would be a wonderful addition to the database or forum.

While it is a tremendous blessing to be able to give your children the gift of traveling across the world, it is equally a blessing to bloom where we are planted. If you take a group of children to a city park or a creek, every child will find something that piques their interest. Some of my favorite memories with my children are of them increasing their speed and agility to catch grasshoppers and frogs, then looking closely at them to notice the chevron pattern on their legs or how delicate yet resilient their bodies are. And them seeing first hand that every creature is perfectly evolved for the earth and the environment to which it is native.

I feel some of the most important lessons and exploration children can do is studying their own local environment. It is free to gather information online or get books from the library about native plants and animals. Foraging for their own food is a fun challenge, and it allows children the opportunity to connect with the earth. After all, they will grow to be the next caretakers of our planet. It is our responsibility to arm them with the knowledge to care for the planet and the creativity to solve problems they will face. I am passionate about creating learning opportunities to foster this kind of knowledge, and making it accessible to all children, regardless of socio-economic status.

It’s exciting to see children freely sharing observations and insights they have and welcoming the same ideas from their friends. I am passionate about creating the kind of world I want to live in and educating the kind of people with whom I want to spend time. My passion is education—learning together, creating together and sharing it with everyone.