This Trad Idaho School May Put Public Education Out Of Business

Ever since becoming a parent, one of the biggest things on my husband and I's mind has been how we plan to educate our kids. And walking through this journey with so many of you and our friends and family at the same time, it's becoming incredibly obvious that the way the United States of America does education, especially for kids under the age of seven, is incredibly backwards and incredibly broken. Tons of different people are reinventing the wheel or maybe even just going back to basics on how we used to educate our kids across the country, whether it's homeschooling or co-ops or even nature-based play school. And years ago, I came across an incredible account on social media from a family doing just that here in North Idaho. Today, we are escaping the studio for this episode of The Isabel Brown Show and getting to know an incredible family trying to reconnect students with nature and play-based school at Alpine Village School and Farms in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Let's go check it out together. I am so excited to be shaking things up today. We are here in beautiful Coeur d'Alene, Idaho at Alpine Village with you guys here at Alpine Village School and Farm. Introduce yourself to the audience and tell us a little bit about what we're seeing around us right now. Okay, I'm Kylie Modiri. It was always a dream of mine to open a school and when we decided to make the big move to Idaho, I stepped foot on this property and it was every part of myself was like, this is it. This is where we're going to do it. So it was going to be opposite from anything that I was familiar with since I came from the public school system. So undergrad in child development, went through my multiple teaching credential, taught for 10 years, master's in education, administrative credential to be a principal and then I had my daughter and everything changed. Suddenly, you realize as much as you don't want to be a part of the system and how much you try to change while you're in the system, you're in that system. So until you fully exit, you're still a part of it and when I had my daughter and saw how her learning was unfolding and what I needed to do to be an attuned, attentive mother, I was like, there's no way I'd put my child in this system. So I resigned. I never looked back. I spent the last eight years completely unprogramming everything I've known about child development, about teaching, about holding an education space and I knew if I was going to do it, it was going to be like this. It was going to be outdoors. It was going to be full of natural light. It was going to be centered around the nervous system. It was going to be bringing parents back in. We're so used to outsourcing our power, especially to authority and my job then became, how am I going to bring parents back in so they feel confident making these decisions and what I'd often hear is, I can't homeschool, like I'm not good enough and I'd say, okay, let's think about that. You want to put your child through the same system that made you feel inadequate to then teach them yourself. So I knew at that point, my role was really to guide parents and the part with the children was going to be easy. You provide the outdoor experience and they take off with their learning but my big job was putting parents back in the driver's seat. You can do this and I'm going to empower you with the research and the knowledge to feel confident again because intuitively, you know exactly what your child needs but we've been separated from that for so long, there's a disconnect right now. I could ask you eight million questions which I'm so excited to based off of that but I love hearing this idea of parents taking ownership of their kids education again. So let's start there because I followed your guys's journey here at Alpine Village School on social media for a long time, well before I became a parent, was married to my husband but especially as I started getting ready to welcome our daughter into the world and I started talking to my parents about how we were raised and the education we received versus this tugging on my husband and I's heart strings to explore more of a homeschool or co-op school situation. I remember my dad distinctly telling me about a year ago that he used to think that the very few people we knew growing up who homeschooled or did something a bit more non-traditional were crazy, right? They were so weird and I had two or three friends maybe that did it ever and they only did it for about two or three years and after that went back to traditional schooling and he said the reason for that is the American education system has convinced parents that they're too stupid to educate their kids, they're going to mess them up somehow and so therefore you have to trust these people who have been credentialed but if anything I think COVID was such a blessing for our country because you watched this curtain be pulled back to learn how the people teaching your kids were taught themselves. So what was that initial first light bulb moment for you as a parent and as an educator to realize hang on a second this system is really broken and that primary education has to come from the parents to begin with? I always knew the system was broken even going into public education. I think a lot of people want to say it's broken, it's a broken system. It's not. It's intentionally designed that way. It hasn't changed since the industrial era and when J.D. Rockefeller funded the board of education in the 1900s there was no going back from that. There was a very clear agenda as to how we were going to institutionalize children. I mean his exact quote was I want a nation of workers not a nation of thinkers. So I always knew the system I was in. It wasn't until I was a mom where I was like wait a second you know because when I was in the system I wanted to change it and there's so many well-intended teachers that go in for the same reason. You're there to emotionally connect with the kids and you try to relieve as much pressure as you can and you create a beautiful classroom that feels inviting but it was really when I had my daughter that I thought if I'm not going to put her in this system I don't want to be a part of it anymore. And it was really just watching her unfold and the time that it took and the regulation she needed from me and all these intricacies of motherhood where I thought to myself this doesn't change at three four or five they still need this. So it was during that time I started looking into other researchers, brain development. I mean I knew there was a missing piece as to how this is supposed to unfold and so the more I immersed myself in different research it was so clear everything that I had been taught in my undergrad my graduate program through my teaching credential through my administrative credential be a principal it was backwards. It's very very similar to my journey of medicine and how I pulled away from western medicine it absolutely has a place a time and a place but it took so much power away from me and this education journey was very similar. And it takes power away from the child too I think with what we're seeing in the current American education system. I shared with you I grew up kind of splitting my time between here in North Idaho and a beautiful community about 30 minutes west of Denver called Evergreen in Colorado and I remember learning distinctly about the era of the one-room schoolhouse and we actually still have a one-room schoolhouse that's now a museum in Evergreen at one of the elementary schools. One-room schoolhouses left. They are so fun to go see and to think about and when we were kids I remember they were shooting a movie that was set in the pioneer era and a bunch of kids got cast as extras from our hometown and got to play one-room schoolhouse for a while but if you think about it we've really only done the education system the way we do right now for about a hundred years before that this idea of being tied to nature in a one-room schoolhouse situation more hands-on learning from a teacher who understands what each individual student is going through at a different pace and that community aspect rather than your parents shipping you off for the day from eight to three and then picking you up not wanting to know what happened all day. Parents being directly involved that has always been the foundation of the American education system and that's exactly what you guys are building here in North Idaho which is so beautiful. For those that are just listening on our podcast platforms you can't see this but chickens are wandering around and there's beautiful greenhouses and it's just such a stunning place here surrounded by the mountains and the trees. Tell me about what building this experience has been like for you and do you feel like this is a renaissance of the one-room schoolhouse concept for education? Okay well first it was a labor of love you have no idea how intense it is until you're in it and you're like am I really doing this but there was such a motivation to change the outlook and the trajectory of how we could be doing this it was just I was so determined to make it happen. Originally behind you the workshop was supposed to be the school and we had somebody come and help me design it with natural light and all these things and I thought to myself I have that right behind me with the greenhouse I don't need to do this elaborate school and really the more they're connected back to earth the more regulated they are anyways so really nature ended up answering so many obstacles and problems that I had along the way of like oh this is a quick fix there's natural light in the greenhouse oh this is a quick fix there's garden beds in the greenhouse so it all really like aligned pretty well as far as the one-room schoolhouse we keep our school really small and we do that intentionally you want that intimacy you want to build that community so a crucial component in public school that we're missing is attachment and attunement it's just too many kids yeah for one teacher to co-regulate right I have really intimate relationships with all the parents of this school we work in partnership to facilitate this child's journey and that's a tremendous amount of space to hold when you're really tending to the emotional and the social development of a child especially after traveling all over the country this week to go visit our friends at Alpine Village who are featuring on today's episode and so many other endeavors the most important thing to me in the entire world is coming home to a comfortable bed where my family can rest and rejuvenate before we hit the road for the next adventure and that feels especially more important during snuggle sweater cozy spooky season which we are in the thick of right now and I am so so grateful that we have partnered with Helix mattresses to help keep our family resting well and all snuggled up together all fall and winter long Helix has a sleep quiz that matches you with the perfect mattress based on your sleep preferences in just a few minutes they have everything for hot or cold sleepers mattresses that are firm soft or anywhere in between and they also offer kids mattresses mattress toppers bed bases and so much more switching to a Helix mattress when I joined the daily wire was a game changer for my family and we already noticed it has made a huge difference in the quality of our sleep and you can bet we are absolutely planning on sharing that with our kids too you can go to helixsleep.com for 20% off site-wide that is a great deal with the most important investment you can ever make when it comes to your rest and your sleep that is helixsleep.com is about for 20% off site-wide make sure you enter our show name the Isabel Brown show after checkout so that they know that we sent you helixsleep.com is about so when when kids show up every day what does their day look like when they come to Alpine Village school I'm sure it's different every day but half of them have their head out the window making some animal sound as the parents are driving in 10 miles an hour they come up and because it's so small and it's intimate there's always a rush of kids running over to greet them they take their stuff they hang it in the greenhouse and then it's play it's play for the first 30 minutes and we have a soft drop-off time for parents who still have younger kids because we know as moms a good night of sleep is never guaranteed amen to that so there's like no need to have this pressure of eight o'clock and now there's a tardy and now there's a truancy and now there's a consequence for that like we're separating ourselves from all of that stress and in that system they start priming us for that at kindergarten even preschool right of like this just tremendous amount of stress that we have to move through the day and it's like nope we have our whole life to be stressed we're not going to start that in the primary years so it's a soft drop-off period kids come they play eventually we get together after 30 minutes we have a morning meeting we all do a check-in kids get to do any kind of share that they want to do or a body movement and that's when we go over what we're going to do for the day and then we have some chores for the kids so whether it's collecting eggs they love to help prepare their lunch so as much as we can grow we have in the garden and then everything else is sourced locally everything is laid out and the kids like to chop they like to prepare the lunch and all of those little things are very intentional we want them connected to their food we want them you know engaging with their meal we want them putting intention in what they're going to cook and you notice when you have food on the table and people around we're sitting there we're talking we're laughing we're having an experience just in lunch prep so we're really moving away from this you got to do your worksheet and then prove to me you know it and you got to do this and prove to me you know it we're just having an experience we're teaching them how to be present because zero to seven is the time that they really get their blueprint of their nervous system absolutely so this is when we're slowing everything down we're being intentional with them we're drawing in the parents the parents will often say you know they have to take off work to be here because twice a month they're here all day and they're assisting us throughout the day and every parent rotates that and they say this is my favorite day of the week it's calm you hear the wind you can look up at the sky you're not staring at a screen so while initially i think it's hard for them to you know arrange time to be here when they're here you just see them come down and they're here and they get to witness their kid in this environment so yeah really creating experiences where we can just be and there's so much learning that happens in that and you know people always say okay it can't just be all play i'm like no no no let's really look at the brain here so much is happening during play they are primed to develop their social and emotional brain right now when we reverse that and we start putting what mainstream education calls more formal academics the reading the writing the sitting still we're working against the brain and you know they've done studies where they're interviewing kindergartners and by age five and six they already know if they're a good or bad student so you know that's when learning becomes a chore that's when the passion for learning is just sucked out of them and you either have a student who knows how to follow the rules and stay in the box and they may do well but most of them are checked out or their spirit is just crushed and it's a pipe you know we know that's the pipeline to prison we can already you know estimate if they're not successful in school by this time their trajectory towards incarceration is looking really high and not to their fault they don't they're not in a system or an environment that's fostering confidence the knowledge the skills to be and to learn and just genuine exploration i think i i grew up in various education settings but mostly in a more Montessori oriented environment where it was very self-driven from the student and that worked really well for most of the students right in our environment because you got to learn the joy of reading your first book or the joy of learning how to do math with blocks and like a tangible tactile experience which i really loved i think we missed the outdoor experience more than anything we always wanted to be playing outside in the mountains of colorado and our favorite week of the entire semester was always the week we got to do outdoor ed when we would go to a summer camp for a couple of days and spend time reconnecting with nature but i think one of the main criticisms people are having of the alternative education or Montessori environment or homeschooling is this idea that play-based learning or individual exploration limits what information you're actually learning that students will never have a chance to learn reading or writing like you mentioned or math the more traditional subjects that certainly do set you up for success later in life what's your counter response to that and how are students learning that here that's all fear-based so we know the brain is primed to learn through play they learn faster through play it gets stored in their working memory in their long-term memory faster when it's engaging through play and through creating those experiences i think there's such a disconnect right now um and we live in such a shame culture that if we're not doing it the way that's most accepted the fear-mongering and the fear-based criticism comes in real quick and that's a well that's not the real world well let's you know what part of a five-year-old's life is the real world they have someone putting them to bed cooking their food like regulating their whole day do we want to prepare them to be resilient humans and handle whatever world they are faced in absolutely but do we need to prepare them for a world that we're not even enjoying that should be the conversation so while this setup is not going to be supportive for every family it's about making small change in your community and trying to meet your community where they are and that will trickle down and that will be a snowball effect but absolutely like the people who are saying that just don't know enough about the brain and they don't know enough about child development and i get it i get it it could be really scary to go to go from something that's more traditional suddenly like okay they're gonna just play that's it like that's their whole day and i think um that snowballs really quickly into it's not just play when we're cooking they're measuring they're cutting you know it takes you one time to cut yourself with a knife to be like i'm not holding the fruit and the knife like that anymore there's so many natural consequences when you have an environment like this the learning is non-stop but my biggest point is it's not just forget all the academics and just let them play and there's no boundaries and there's no rules that's not what we're doing here we're supporting the child through their emotional and social development now so that after age seven the more formal academic learning happens so fast and people don't realize that when we tend to the brain and the body right now through a nervous system perspective creating attachment creating community attuning to adults that are trusting around them when they are ready to sit down read and write it takes off so much faster and i always tell parents too if you're three or four year old or five year old is interested in those you don't need to keep it away from them sure engage with it but most i mean we can look at this generations that are coming out of college i feel like they're coming out more confused more lost less resilient more dependent on labels of why something is not feeling right it goes straight to a label you know when for so long just looking at their education system they've been forced in a box that never quite fit them so of course they're going to come out leaving confused and disembodied and i'm not really sure what to do with this yeah but when we spend the crucial ages zero to seven doing that now they learn about free will they learn about boundaries they learn how to ask for support they learn how to be in a social situation they have a connection with themselves that's how you create resilient humans then we can get into the formal academics then we can get into the more traditional schooling if that fits for your family yeah i love that alpine village is taking teaching health to our children so so seriously and that is exactly why i am so passionate to be partnering with jevity while lately it feels like everybody has just been pushing the latest tiktok wellness trend or magic greens powder i have been asking myself why are we just trusting the one size fits all solutions for our health that we see on social media especially as a new mom i cannot afford to just guess what my body needs anymore which is exactly why on the show we partnered with jevity they are doing something radically different actual science still a thing who knew through at home blood work they show you exactly what your body needs no more throwing money at random supplements and just hoping that something eventually works especially through my breastfeeding journey which i've been so fortunate to continue through the first six months of my daughter's life i have to really know exactly what i'm putting in my body when it comes to supplements and when it comes to my nutrition and diet and here's what really sold me jevity creates personalized supplement packs based on your specific blood work not what some random influencer is selling you this week on social media their ai analyzes your results and then real wellness experts review everything so that you can get a blueprint that is actually tailored to your body and your specific health needs we fight for truth in politics we fight for it in education and our faith why not fight for it in our health too if you're ready to stop guessing and start knowing exactly what your body needs head to go jevity.com slash isabel brown or visit the link in the show notes of today's episode to learn more and get an exclusive discount choose jevity because your health deserves so much better than whatever is trending on social media that word resiliency is a really powerful choice i think and i'd be curious there's probably not an apples to apples conversion here in idaho because let's face it kovid didn't really exist in idaho ever which is part of the reason that you moved here but coming from the bay area in california as an educator how do you think students who have been here at alpine village school are adjusting to the quote-unquote real world into real world scenarios compared to the students that have been shoved inside with no recess no play sitting there with masks not being able to read facial cues how do you think students are going to go in two different directions in the next couple of decades in american education because of those few years where we didn't let kids connect with one another or their environment it doesn't matter how small smart you are it doesn't matter how intelligent you are at the end of the day if you can't articulate what you're trying to do and work with other people to make that dream come true you're not going to be very successful and you know that's with starting a company running a business so all of our kids aged out of this program and they all went to other some went to alternative schools some went to a more traditional school um all of them left reading even though that wasn't the focus here but they were excited to do that my daughter as well all of them left with some basic writing and it's not because they were forced to sit down but they still have the passion and the fire to figure it out that hasn't been beaten out of them and their communication skills that if anything like we have people come to the school and watching a group of five to seven year olds work out a problem saying i'm not feeling heard um i don't feel i feel like i need more space right now i need a moment to check in with myself and come back i know that talk sounds silly because we're not used to hearing kids talk like that but isn't that the world we want for adults we want people to know like hang on i don't want to be reactive i just need a moment to gather myself and i'm going to come back in or even hearing a five-year-old say i'm not feeling heard right now so whatever's going on right here we need to you know pause for a second and get some more help or figure this out so just even their ability to be in conflict you know when you have 30 kids in a classroom how is a teacher supposed to manage all of that yeah it kind of goes into fight or flight you're either going to run out or or they're going to fawn and they're going to just people please and then give up their will entirely yeah so there's so much in this program that really um especially there's so much in this program that i want to convey with will too you know when kids are forced to share super early when kids are are in a classroom with 30 other children and their needs are not being met like these are really important situations that we need to pay attention to because like what we saw with covid will went out the door people were so afraid to speak their truth whatever side you were on it was just like obey and just go with the masses those ideas and beliefs don't come in adulthood those are developed now so when you create an environment where it's a small school and they get to work those things out and they get to know what it feels like to have will and that doesn't mean that none of these kids share but you set boundaries around it you know when you give them the language that's what creates adults that we want in the world right now nothing would make me happier than a bunch of little kids running around that are wonderfully emotionally regulated because i often think we ask ourselves oh my gosh how did our culture get here how did we ever let some of these behaviors or ideas become normalized why are we so divided why are we so angry of course it starts in how we treat our children and i love the revolution that you guys are starting here which starts at home really with these these parents being so involved in these families shaking things up yeah as you have messages for parents here in north idaho or across the country i know you guys do a lot of outreach on social media as well to other parents who are starting to navigate their educational journey i'm one of those people i have a five month old and obviously it's a few years away before we start thinking about school but certainly it's something that's been on all of our minds and our friends minds what message of encouragement do you have for parents to know that there are good changes coming in the education system in our country i think first and foremost for parents to understand you're good enough and you can do it and you're strong enough and you're smart enough and you are going to be your child's compass and you could do it and really you know the goal often people ask me are you going to franchise you're going to open more schools that was never part of the vision my vision was to help other teachers other parents start something very similar so we had greenhouses on our property so great that's what i used if we didn't have greenhouses if we had a workshop it would be it would look very different but i really just want to encourage parents you don't have to have a teaching background i mean i reversed everything that i learned in 18 years of being in the field whether it was my undergrad or my graduate program or actually teaching so you don't need to have teachers running it mothers intuitively know how to guide it's great when fathers are involved but just reaching out to other like-minded people and saying we could start something like this we only run our program three days a week and that's intentional we want kids to be with their families more than they're with us so it doesn't have to be you know oftentimes i even see when parents are going the alternative route homeschool looks very much like school it's a lot of worksheets it's a lot of sitting down it's a lot of stress so just breaking away from that and knowing school can look like anything you can life school taking your child to the grocery store there's learning in that obviously when you have more than one kid and they get older you want something more but just reaching out to other parents who are like-minded and even getting that momentum we can create beautiful things my long-term goal is to consult with community members so i can show people exactly how to set this up and it's going to look different right it's going to look different in every state it's going to look different in every community because i'm building around what this community wants and meeting them where they are it would look completely different if i was in the bay area where i'm from but i think there are good changes coming up you just have to be brave enough to know it's going to look different it's going to feel different and there's going to be fear that's coming up because it's different but as long as we're able to identify that and keep moving i think all of us know you know in our internal compass that this is the right direction that if you have a choice of having your kid inside all day with artificial lights and he's they're splitting their attention with 29 other kids versus being outside being around animals exposed to natural light cooking your food growing your food i think more parents would want that it's just that's a big jump we haven't even known that was an option totally it's a completely new realm of thinking which is so funny because it's the way humans have always been doing everything for a long time you alluded to this a little bit in that answer but what's next for alpine village school and if you had a vision for this transforming communities across the country what would that look like so next is expansion i'm trying to figure out what this looks like after seven i mean i know i know what it looks like but it's building the infrastructure for that um so yeah so definitely expanding and then i would love to consult i would love to consult with other i mean often teachers reach out can i fly out with my family and just be there and see what see what it's like or can you walk me through the business aspect of it can you walk me through the logistics of it you know there's lots of different components or i'll have a lot of people reaching out for the curriculum and the curriculum is easy the curriculum is where we are in the seasons you know you can incorporate math and science and writing and reading and all of it but it's just like where we are that's how we bring in our curriculum so really just consulting with other people of if this is your vision i can help make that possible just by sharing what didn't work for me and what i would do differently but right now you know for this school is just expanding and showing that as we're getting into the more traditional side of schooling they can still be outside they could still be playing it can still be small group and parents can still be and should be very involved in the journey i am so excited for you guys in your next chapter and i'm dying to get a bigger look around so do you mind let's do a tour i love it alpine village who were featuring on the show today is radically redefining how we educate the next generation but other groups have been doing that for young adults for years and it is shocking to me that more people have not heard of 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on the boards for american patriots it all traces back to njc's internship journalism boot camp which covers everything you need to break into media whether you're interested in podcasting like me video production print reporting or independent journalism more importantly if you are ready to just take away the liberal news media to fight back in american culture and you want to win get off the sidelines and into the game you can submit your application to the national journalism center today the second favorite place of the kids they line up on the skates oh look they know we're coming for them you are beautiful so quarter horses kalina the morgan draft is wendy oh hello sweet our main teacher is an herbalist and she trains horses oh so as the years were progressing we realized why aren't we bringing in the horses to teach co-regulation wow so horses can mirror us they're incredibly sensitive animals that's why they're used in equine therapy so the students can actually have a visceral feeling yeah of that calm they know how to come up to the horses and the horses will match that so oftentimes our teacher miss rachel will take them out here and we will do breathing and the moment the horses know it's safe to come in the horses will come in and then they'll mimic our breathing wow so they actually get this feeling of okay this is what it's like to co-regulate or share a calm energy and be a little silly too yeah yes so she'll just do basic horsemanship of how we should be around the horses our mannerisms with the horses how to brush the horses how to fill the water and make sure they're taken care of and they've seen firsthand too when they come in real hot the horses are like see you later yep we've also taken instruments out here and played and the horses will come in so again another example of we can share that calm energy or we can share that chaotic energy for the parents we're teaching it as co-regulation that you get to help your child either come down or escalate up for the kids we just talk about okay we're sharing some calm energy right now we're like oh we're sharing really excited energy right now but when they see the horses go they have to kind of center themselves because they want the horses to come back so it's really fun yeah oh beautiful and then my daughter does junior rodeo so she's always wanting to go out here and show the kids some things but yep the kids will be in the pasture and it's been a really wonderful experience to share that with the horses and the kids horses are so special some of my favorite childhood memories are from riding and being at the barn and you just learn so much about respect and how to take care of something so much bigger than yourself totally connecting with something so beautiful you know she that the gal who teaches at the school rachel her philosophy working with horses is almost identical to mine working with kids when she first told me this is a 1500 pound animal sure we could break it we could beat it but at the end of the day you want your nine-year-old standing in front of it and you want this horse to know respect and connection so her philosophy was connection over correction which is the same thing for the school and so right away i said okay we have to incorporate the horses in our curriculum we have to make this part of what we do here and the students love it and usually it's the little kids are over here after we're in morning meeting then the moms come and they like you know kind of chill out for a little bit with the horses and the kids and so that's really fun too i love that yeah you can't tell now but this is the most epic sledding hill that the kids will build it takes them a couple of weeks you know they know to pack it down and they have to go over it so many times they build bumps they build turns actually last year we hosted a night sledding party that was epic that's awesome so you know when people like what do you learn at a play school um physics yep teamwork you know i can't tell you how many times a kid will not be paying attention to their surroundings and they walk right in and they learn real quick like okay i have to know to walk around so there's a lot that's even happening here and then when it's not snow we're just enjoying the grass so we're bringing out the balls and the rocket launching and they have just full freedom to run you know those big balls that you get at uh walgreens or walmart like the big giant ones growing up in suburba you kick that once and it's in two neighbors yard you never see it again and then i came out here i'm like oh that's what these balls are for they can kick them and launch them as far as they want and it doesn't go anywhere it's still here so we definitely just utilize this area to just get the zoomies out we have a garden over here now we adopt permaculture practices so this is not your typical instagrammable farm yeah we let things die we let things go into dormancy we teach the kids that there is a time for the medicine to go back into the roots and that's you know the only way it's going to come back in the spring potent is if we give it time so um that's pretty symbolic of our school too as far as just honoring the child's pace and and how we move but there's a lot of medicine that grows here that will harvest throughout and then we have our famous fairy tree come in here and just feel the magic oh my gosh so just have all the leaves canopy around you and the shadows and the sun so we end almost every day under here with the read aloud and by that time spot the parents are coming the little kids are coming so they know right away and they come in here but yeah we've we've had parties under here we've held circles under here we've decorated really pretty flowers and hung them from under here this is truly like one of the most magical spots on the property yeah it's amazing yeah wow so a lot of lessons take place out of here and oftentimes when the child the children have time to just kind of decompress after lunch you'll find them here of course i want to take a nap here this is like absolutely heaven it's amazing wow yeah so cool yeah so super open you know when i first moved from the bay area the idea of letting things die like this is insane right yeah i was like the beds aren't filled and this and that and it's taken so much reprogramming to say nope but that's how we want to sustain it has to be like this they're molting right now so they're getting ready for their thicker feathers for the winter how many do you guys have here on the property about 60 now oh my gosh that's amazing so we're in the orchard doesn't look much of an orchard right now wrong season let's get there so we did a massive pruning last season so it's going to take a minute for the fruit to start coming back and then we added 12 new trees that all died the next winter we had a really harsh winter so then we planted them again so we're very much babying this orchard yeah but the first year of school is great the kids pick tons of apples and pears and then of course we just design lessons around those that's so cool baking and cooking and fermenting and preserving and canning so there's so much even within that so having the kids in the coop collecting eggs is always a fan favorite and then last year we had baby chicks so they got to see that so we have our enclosed garden area in here so we're not in the greenhouse unless it's snowing and even then we're just in there to kind of put stuff away yeah so we'll bring out the stoves this is where we cook this is where we eat and the kids get to practice outside gardening because greenhouse gardening is very different than outside gardening so we've cleared all the beds so we can put in our garlic and some of our root vegetables so we're preparing for that in between seasons right now we have our garden bunnies in here so sweet yeah no that's thyme and huckleberries under there oh but we won't go in the greenhouses until in wintertime when it starts to snow so until then we're out here okay so playground this was all built very intentional we try to limit the nose so if this is an area that they get to play and move their bodies we're going to make it really expansive and wide and giving them less gadgets actually promotes more creativity so if you look at this playground there's not much to it we have a climbing structure we have pull-up bars and then the med kitchen which is a fan favorite and then our stage which we do morning meeting and even in the snow time will come out here but you want an expansive space you want risk-taking behavior you want uneven surfaces you want kids to be barefoot so we're thinking about all of that when we design this playground and actually my husband and i built everything except this and this wow that's incredible so we were in the forest chopping it down doing the things the hardest work i've ever done um and then we're really lucky because we have medicine all around we have our elderberry tree which just did a bunch of berries and they'll have another harvest soon we have our wild plum tree and as we get into the forest we have rose hips we have st john's wort we're really lucky we have a lot of native medicine around here okay so let's check out the greenhouse classroom whoa whoa this is awesome so this is it all the natural light if we do need light in the winter because the snow will canopy we have incandescent bulbs wow um everything that the kids need to cook and prepare we teach them how to do all of this stuff so they're setting the table they're doing their dishes they're even participating in cooking so we try to ingrain those skills in as well as you can see we're working on two burner stoves it's nothing elaborate yeah simple yep so in a couple of months you'll see all the plants starting to come in and the medicine that we've grown and then we're just on one chalkboard that's it it's interesting coming from the public school system you know you're used to seeing manipulatives everywhere and posters those things don't survive in the greenhouse classroom there's too much light there's too much heat so we can control all of that in the winter you can be in here in a tank top so we'll have the heat going in the summer we'll have the fan going and it's sucking out the hot air but it also reminds me to go back to the basics and you don't need all those posters yeah not at this age when they get older sure they're going to need more things to reference but at this young age we don't need all that stuff they just need to be looking at their garden beds full and the chalkboard for whatever song we're doing and then we're outside adventuring yeah so it's pretty simple in here wow i love it so this is the medicine we're exploring now we're able to harvest rose hip that's amazing rose hip is super high in vitamin c so 50 times an orange like this stuff i did not know that that's why it's expensive in facial oils huh yep so we make this out of a we'll do a fruit leather and then we have the elderberry growing right outside so they'll see the fresh elderberry then we have the dried stuff this is dried rose hip wow and the kids wanted to do an experiment fermenting elderberry and honey to see how much medicine can get in the honey and so we did dried elderberry which seems to be taking forever but you can see in the light the honey is changing colors already so we know the infusion is happening huh you know i didn't get a chance to ask you about this actually you guys have t-shirts and hats that say farms over pharma how does that start with the kids teaching the kids of the abundance of medicine that's growing around us that's how it is you know we always we're very grateful for western medicine but i feel like there's a time and a place and before we go that route there's so much that they can do there's so many things they can empower themselves with just outside that's for free and so we're going to use that first and if that's not working great they always have another option but they're going to learn how to forge medicine they're going to learn how it feels in their body they're going to learn how to make it a tincture how to make it an elixir they're going to learn how to make it a tea and then that's a life skill they have forever i love that yeah okay this is where the students tend to migrate after lunch so it's more forested areas we want it like this we want them ducking we want them paying attention to their surroundings this is all intentional so the kids will naturally migrate out here after lunch just for some downtime and some swinging and then another important component we didn't talk about at our school is our parent classes so they're mandatory so once a month parents come in for two hours and that's where we're connecting all the research that we do in the school to the child and why we do it and so we're trying to empower them with as much information and resources as possible so that they feel more confident in their child's journey and then we have a nervous system-based chiropractor come out wow yep and she works on the students and their families twice a month so again giving a felt sense of safety of this is what it feels like to be in our our nervous system and feel safe and so that's been a really crucial component to our school hmm this is awesome yeah i would hang out here all day yeah and they're out here rain snow sunshine hail i mean they have the gear so weather is not a thing for us here there's no such thing as bad weather only bad gear wow this is awesome yeah thank you thank you thank you to kylie and her beautiful family and for opening up your gorgeous space with us to understand more of what you guys are doing if you guys are interested in following along with alpine village and maybe starting something similar in your community if you're inspired by this episode we'll make sure to link their accounts in the description of this video don't forget to subscribe wherever you are watching or listening to catch the next episode of the isabel brown show and we'll see you next time