OUR APPROACH

At the Black Crown Collective we are committed to children’s creativity, choice, growth and connection to self and community. We embrace intellectual, emotional, social and educational methods that enhance life literacy through our collective daily practices.

PROJECT-BASED MICROSCHOOLING

Because children of differentiated skill levels join our community, our project-based learning approach accommodates a range of learners in an engaging and challenging manner. At The Black Crown Collective, our curriculum therefore meets at the confluence of nature-based immersion, Montessori methods, social justice activism and project-based education practices.

REGGISORI

We hold ourselves accountable to learning goals, growth and creativity by employing Montessori style observations and Reggio-Emilia inspired documentation of learning.

NATURE-BASED INTEREST LED LEARNING

Another key component of our approach to learning is that nature is our living laboratory. At Black Crown, collaboration and communication, exploration and discovery, magic and wonder are thoroughly encouraged. The children’s interests and discoveries in nature guide their education and inquiry. Our natural surroundings become a place of research, our living laboratory. Here, we plant seeds of laughter, learning, connection and community.

CORE CURRICULUM

Please take a glance at our Core Curriculum and take a closer look at the trajectory of possibilities our learning may take in each core subject area.

PLACE-BASED, SERVICE LEARNING

In our natural classroom, the environment serves as a third teacher. The Reggio Emilia philosophy embraces the environment as a space for providing numerous opportunities for children to explore, experiment, develop their own ideas and to test their theories. An education that moves in sequence with nature’s rhythms expands our capacity to hear and listen and deeply connect, reflect and learn in our particular place in the universe.

EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING + SOCIAL JUSTICE ACTIVISM

We engage more deeply with our fieldwork by investing in opportunities for learners to dig into experiential learning within the boundaries of our natural classroom and within the larger community. Connecting children with issues, experts and allies within our own community makes project-based learning more meaningful, more accessible and more immediate. Employing the principles of place-based learning allows the community to become our learning lab.

MULTI-AGE GROUPING

In a natural community, children spend their daily lives with elders, babies, and everyone in between.  They do not compete, but learn to search out the needs of others and to help them live and learn.  This multi-age group and habit of teaching and helping others, and being helped and taught by people younger or older than oneself, is a part of our Montessori classes.

Nature guides us + Justice awakens us + Montessori roots us + Joy connects us