Our Hybrid Preschool Experiment
A couple weeks ago, I launched Home inStead, a side project and blog series about designing family life with a little more intention and a little less autopilot. If you missed it, you can read it here: Home inStead: Reflections on Family, Place, and Meaningful Work.
With this announcement, I heard from some folks wondering if this meant I’d be homeschooling our preschooler this year. I posted back in November that we were grappling with the school decision and exploring several “non-traditional” options, but a lot has changed in the past nine months, so here’s our update.
The preschool decision has been one of the first real opportunities to question the default paths and instead work to create something that truly reflects our family’s values.
The Paths Not Taken
We ended up deciding not to apply to any of the independent Montessori, Waldorf, or Reggio Emilia schools we initially considered. Without getting into all the details, it came down to three main reasons:
We couldn’t stomach the cost of private school tuition and what our family could otherwise do with that money.
None of the programs checked every box for us.
We believe in a free and public education for all.
Even though number three is true, and deeply tied to my professional work, we also decided to turn down a spot we were offered in our local half-day public pre-K program.
Part of that decision was practical. A 2½-hour daily program left very little uninterrupted time for my consulting work, especially with a one-year-old still at home. The drop-off and pick-up rhythm would have created busy mornings without providing the focused work block I actually need.
The bigger reason had more to do with our daughter than our calendar. At three years old, she doesn't seem to need a traditional classroom yet. She thrives through imaginative play, exploring the world around her, and asking endless questions. We don’t feel urgency to jump into a more academic school experience just yet.
So rather than try to find one program to meet every need, we started asking ourselves, “What kind of childhood are we hoping to create?”
We knew we wanted time outside, meaningful work (for all of us), flexibility to enjoy the various places and people we call home, plenty of room for play, and the opportunity to build relationships and community with others.
Our Week
Rather than looking for one program to do everything, we're creating a rhythm that blends independent experiences, home learning, and lots of time outdoors.
Two full days outdoors
Twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays, my daughter will attend an outdoor preschool, where children spend the majority of the day outside in all seasons. She’ll have chances to build friendships, solve problems, take age-appropriate risks, and build confidence while also experiencing typical preschool structures, such as morning circle, shared meal times, and learning to follow group rules.
By coordinating childcare for my youngest on these days, it also gives me substantial blocks of uninterrupted work time.
Mid-week garden mornings
This one is still taking shape, but I’ve been collaborating with a local nature educator to launch a small home-and-garden learning community on Wednesday mornings. This isn't official yet. So far we’ve shared the recruitment flyer below to find a handful of families who are excited by the idea of a gentle-separation program for preschoolers.
The vision is a morning filled with sensory play, movement, stories, and nature exploration in a community garden, with short periods where caregivers step away while remaining nearby.
Forest Fridays:
When not traveling to Michigan, we join a caregiver-child nature hiking group on Friday mornings, led by a Waldorf educator. Both of my daughters get the chance to explore local forests, creeks, and prairies alongside other families.
We’ve actually been doing this one since last fall, and it has been as much of a treat for me as it has been for my girls. I love experiencing the natural places in and around our city through all the seasons and watching my children begin to recognize familiar trails, rivers, and meadows we visit.
Mondays stay open:
I left Monday intentionally unscheduled. Sometimes we’ll stretch our weekends in Michigan. Other weeks we'll have a playdate, go to the library, visit a museum, bake bread, or follow my daughter's interests through play-based literacy or STEM activities.
Mondays will be about easing into the week with as much slowness and sweetness as we need.
Nature as the Anchor
The family value driving the way we have chosen to organize our week is simple: we want our children to spend time outside and develop deep, meaningful relationships with the natural world.
With the climate crisis and the attack on public lands, it feels particularly urgent to raise children who feel connected to the Earth and, hopefully, compelled to protect it.
There is a poem by Nicolette Sowder that captures this hope better than I can:
Poetry aside, it’s worth mentioning that this move (as many of my decisions tend to be) is also grounded in a growing body of research.
During my graduate studies, I read Richard Louv's Last Child in the Woods, which introduced many families to the idea of "nature-deficit disorder," arguing that children's physical and emotional well-being is deeply connected to regular experiences outdoors. Since then, researchers have continued to find associations between time in nature and improvements in attention, stress regulation, creativity, physical health, and social-emotional development.
More recent research continues to reinforce many of those benefits. Just this week I read Katarina Zimmer's How Nature Nurtures in National Wildlife magazine, which explains how scientists are working to understand why spending time in nature offers so many benefits.
The article also introduced me to a new resource: NWF’s Green Hour®, which encourages families to aim for an hour each day for children to play and learn in nature and provides tips and activities for getting outside more.
As someone who spent years working in education, nature has always been one of my favorite classrooms. My English language arts students could often be found sitting on a tree branch reading a book or lying in the grass writing poetry. I relished chaperoning the sixth-grade overnight camp trip, where students spent three days teambuilding, stretching their comfort zones, and completely disconnected from devices of any kind.
I find it fascinating that some of the richest learning environments require remarkably few materials. I watch my own children turn a fallen tree into a balance beam. Mud and sticks are science projects. A hike becomes a vocabulary lesson because children naturally narrate, question, compare, and wonder.
Those are exactly the kinds of learning experiences I hope to protect and give my children more of.
Learning the Rules
This year, my daughter will not learn how to silently walk single file down the hallway, perhaps taking her turn as line leader or caboose. She will not learn how to sit criss-cross-applesauce on her assigned carpet square. She will not know the sound of bells over the loudspeaker signaling the transition from lunch to recess.
But I think she will still learn plenty that will serve her in the future, including if and when we eventually transition to a more traditional learning environment.
As I think about learning the rules, one thing I've realized is that many children are taught about nature far more often than they're taught how to be in it. My own children included.
I’m frequently coaching my daughters that we don’t pick the flowers in our neighbors’ yards as we walk around the block. When we visit my parents, who live on a lake, I have to explain why we don’t take home every shell we find. These little parenting moments have made me think more intentionally about the knowledge and habits I want my children to develop as they spend more and more time outdoors.
With those moments, and our year of hybrid “schooling” ahead, in mind, I’ve created a resource to help children explore respectfully, safely, and confidently outdoors.
These are rules and skills we can practice and learn throughout our whole week that help us consider:
How do we respect living things? What do we do when we find something cool like a mushroom, a bird's nest, or an animal track? How do we explore with curiosity while caring for the places we visit?
Trial and Error
I want to say this clearly because it's the heart of the Home inStead series: this isn't a blueprint. It's an experiment.
The hope is that we're building a life that supports meaningful work, connected family time, and the kind of childhood we hope our daughters remember. We’ll learn from this school year, adjust as we go, and reassess next year. Four-year old pre-K may look completely different. Kindergarten almost certainly will.
Over the coming months, I'll be sharing individual posts about each piece of this hybrid approach: our outdoor preschool experience, whether our Wednesday home-and-garden program comes to life, what we’re discovering on Forest Fridays, and the home learning resources we're weaving into our days.
For now, we're simply beginning here, with muddy boots and a calendar that finally feels like it reflects who we are.
This hybrid schedule may feel chaotic to some and is surely not for everyone. I also recognize that we are privileged to have the flexibility and freedom to experiment in ways that allow us to prioritize our family’s values.
That's part of what I hope Home inStead can become: a place to share these experiments honestly, including the parts that work and the parts that don't, and to make a little more room for conversations about the many ways a family can build a life.
If you've made an unconventional choice about school, work, home, or family life, I'd love to hear about it. What have you chosen differently, and what led you there?
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