top of page
We the Guardians
For the Love of learning
Children naturally learn in real-life contexts with adults they are attached to.
Make the most of this natural way of learning with a Flexible Curriculum, designed for parents and educators.
We the Guardians
Foto genoemen in het voedselbos Leiden 2025 Yuriko
​
Teaching Real-Life-Skills? The Flexible Curriculum gives insight in the progress and talents of your children. It gives freedom to teach, based on a solid foundation
If we want our children.......
- to become flexible, we should teach them in changing surroundings.
- to be eager to learn, we need to answer their questions.
- to ask questions, we should teach them in diverse surroundings within context.
- to be involved in society, we should encourage them to practice their talents and interests in their own community.
- to grow in character, we should coach them in facing challenges.
- to be creative and innovative, then reward the process and their perseverance.
- to learn, then they need parents and teachers who are themselves curious in finding answers.-
- to become strong, we should give them a foundation to build on.
Attachment is an important key in educating children
​The Attachment Village is the network in which the child feels at home.
'
How can we create such an environment? Actually we do not have to create something new, but tap into what already exists ....namely the family, and as the child grows older the extended family, friends, neighborhood, village, city and the nation we live in. These places are societies, that are vibrant, lively and full of challenges. In these natural environments talents can be discovered and practiced in different contexts. ' Attachment Village' is the right description of this home-like network and has been introduced by Gordon Neufeld iand Gabor Maté in their book Hold on to your Kids
It helps children to develop and learn naturally.
Relationships and a feeling of belonging gives children the confidence to explore their environment and talents. Children are eager to see how adults participate in society and pick up a lot of our choices and activities. Well-being is an essential requirement for learning.
It takes a Village to Raise a Child
It helps adults to share their responsibility load with other trusted adults. Ideally young couples should work on their network. Who are my friends? Which family member do I have contact with? We choose the people who have an interest in our lives. When a child is born into the family we introduce our children to these contacts. They can help us take good care of our youngest as needed.
It is one of the best memories from our whole holidays – it really left a big impression on the children and also on us grown-ups – I learned so many new things and really enjoyed you and all the others. What a wonderful, enriching surrounding, what a wonderful group and what a wonderful message behind the great work the two of you are doing!
K.
An attachment village gives ample opportunities to take part in Real-Life Activities
Learning from Real-Life Experiences
Because real-life situations are the core of our teaching, it seems hard to plan activities, to evaluate what the child has learnt, to watch in which way we see improvement. It needs a Flexible Curriculum with lots of activities, goals and helpful information. In our Flexible Curriculum activities can be chosen, goals identified, progress is made visible.
It needs adults, who are busy with Real-Life Activities.
Real-life activities offer an excellent context for complex learning. Parents are very good at offering real-life activities. Naturally they involve children with their everyday activities. Real-life settings can be perceived as simple, but could be complex for the learner. Parents can do the things they find important, be with other adults to take part in real-life activities. The fun part is that the activities are not only interesting fo the children but important to parents as well.
Children practice skills in different contexts. Because Real-Life Activities differ greatly from one context to another, children have ample opportunity to practice their skills. Whether it is the skill of walking, cycling, measuring length, reading Real-Life Activities bring a lot of variation to the activity.
When children learn e.g. to walk short or longer distances, they get a sense of the connection of time and distance. They can use their skill in the city, with its roads and traffic, in nature, walking up-hill or down-hill, in walking on the tar path, gravel road of off-roads, on a sunny day, when it is raining or stormy weather.
This is something that really has to be shared with the world. The more people seeing it and hopefully being inspired by it, the better!
As natural it is to take our toddlers along with us in many real-life settings as shopping, cooking, walking in nature, it seems that as the child grows older, we do not always recognize the momentum to help them master skills, independence, analytic reasoning, flexibility and so much more. But if we take note we can see plenty of opportunities to teach our children the beautiful lessons in life. How can we be a guide for our older children in Real-Life Activities? To help seeing the enormous opportunities that real-life experiences give we wrote The Flexible Curriculum.
tekst van Yuriko en Arie
tekst van Annelies en Merijn
A flexible curriculum is a curriculum that is used within real-life. It gives a framework to be able to choose activities that suits the occasion or interest. It gives insights into your child's talents in similar or different contexts. Children learn all the time, by what they see, hear, experience. They learn even from things we don't mention, like our expectations, our habits etc.
It is very interesting that by changing the context in which children learn, the approach to learning and to the outcome of learning often changes as well. You can follow the Flexible Curriculum step by step. Gradually you can adjust to your own situation, time schedule, levels of learning as you feel more confident.
The Flexible Curriculum exists of activities within real-life settings. First within the family setting, but as the child grows older it will participate in activities within the extended family, neighborhood, village, region, nation and world affairs. The involvement differs from watching the activities to being innovative with the knowledge acquired. Most of the activities are derived from the natural world or connected to it.. We learn in nature and from nature. The lessons aim to instill a love for life-long learning, and apply that knowledge in practice. In order to reach this goal we have the following programme.
The Flexible Curriculum consist of 6 cycles:
​
-
Family-cycle: activities and learning are in and around the home; e.g. clean water, use of electricity, cooking healthy foods, growing sprouts, hospitality in the home.
-
Neighbourhood-cycle: activities and learning take place within the smaller community, e.g. traffic rules, markets, flora and fauna in parks
-
City-cycle: activities and learning focus on the small village or city-context e.g. architecture, city design, green zones
-
Regional Cycle: activities and learning zooms in on a region with its specific environment, Natural Parks, watermanagement.
-
National Cycle: activities and learning deal with topics that are of national level, such as national politics, democracy, judicial system, protecting sea life.
-
International Cycle: activities and learning are mainly in English and focuses on topics on an international level: international trade, sustainability,
I​
What is the Content of the Flexible Curriculum?
The learning material is based on 6 segments, that are a reflection of the careers available in society: - Technology- Survival Basics- Health- Arts and crafts- Food- Building - Creation. All segments are connected to nature and are interconnected. The topics from each segment (a pizza slice) constitute approximately 6 weeks of materials and activities.These activities are called Lev:
The goal of a theme is to practice a Real-Life Skill. Theory, Routine-skills and Procedural Skills are offered 'Just-in-Time', as described in the 4C-ID Model from Jeroen Merriënboer., https://www.4cid.org/This has been practiced in High schools when teaching Complex Learning and gives a very good base to Real-Life Learning.
Every 6 weeks we focus on one sector. In this illustration the smaller circles involve the family and neighborhood and the larger the village or city. Each circle has to deal with the same sector. but in different levels. In this way different generations can be occupied with the same activities but on different levels. Children can quickly move from one level to the next or take some more time.
Advantages of the Flexible Curriculum: it gives In depth learning and successive learning can take place at the same time. E.g. students can study technology in the family-cycle and art in the city-cycle This allows children to repeat subjects when needed and speed up the learning process when possible .This method is based on the 4C-ID model.
Who can use the Curriculum?
-
Parents who want to build their attachment village.
-
Parents who have an attachment network
-
Parents who want to practice making the most of Real-Life-Activities
-
Teachers who want to value the Attachment Village and make the most of it in the school-setting.
-
Teachers who want to give Real-Life-Activities
-
Teachers who want to be inspired by being connected to the students life.
-
For educators who would like to use the Flexible Curriculum at their Primary School. ​​
How to get started:
Join our meetings for two weeks for free. receive all the support that you need to ​​use the Flexible Curriculum. Learn about the support that is awaiting you: The coming weeks we the activities will be focused on the theme Bio mimicry.
Fill in the contact form
,We would love to hear from you.
​​
Support
Circle of learning
Support is essential in education. We offer support to teachers, parents and students in the following:
-
Courses in nature
-
Support of experts about well-being of your child as a basis for learning.
-
Discover the strengths and talents of your child
-
Easy to follow progress charts
-
1:1 support
-
Cambridge English Courses
​​
Online for adults:
​
-
Information about the weekly activities
-
In depth information about the weekly theme
-
Learn to use Story-telling with your children
-
Discuss educational topics with parents, teachers and experts.
-
Become more fluent in English Speaking Skills with Cambridge English
​
​
​
​ Learn more about our online meetings in the online introductory meeting.
January 14th to end of February 2026
​
We step into an amazing world of beautiful, breathtaking, surprising nature. There is so much to wonder about the world around us. Let's delve into the solutions, innovations in nature and see how we can learn from it. A very important topic regarding preservation and restoration of our planet.
Join our online meetings on this amazing topic. You will receive 2 weeks of background information and learning activities for free. After 2 weeks you decide whether you want to continue.
​
Rather join a local group? You are welcome to join the group in Katwijk aan Zee or Apeldoorn in the Netherlands. We meet weekly.
​​
bottom of page