Four Programs. One Community.
Tiny Roots · Ages 1–3
8:30 -11:30 am, Half day
Three hour morning sessions
Peak & Green Seasons · All year
A gentle morning program for the youngest explorers guided by teachers who understand exactly what a 1, 2, or 3-year-old needs: rhythm, warmth, repetition, and sensory richness. No rushing. No outcomes. Just a safe, beautiful morning of touching soil, smelling herbs, hearing live music, painting with natural materials, and being completely, joyfully present.
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Inspired by Waldorf's reverence for early childhood, Forest School's love of the outdoors, and the indigenous understanding that the natural world is the first and best teacher. Tiny Roots gives the very youngest children something simple and profound: a second home, a living garden, and a community that knows their name.​
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Nourishment add-ons: organic snack · healthy lunch · herbal drinks
Organic snack is served at 10 am and lunch at 11:45 am
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Little Roots · Ages 1–5
8:30 am to 2 pm, Full day
Peak & Green Seasons · All year
A full sensory immersion in the natural world.
Every day, young children move between garden, kitchen, art space, and music circle — planting, cooking, painting, singing, and crafting in Spanish and English.
Inspired by Waldorf rhythm, Reggio curiosity, Forest School wildness, and the living traditions of Costa Rica — Little Roots gives young children a day that is nourishing from first song to last story. No desks. No screens. Just hands, soil, color, sound, and wonder.
Children paint with watercolors and natural pigments. They model with beeswax and clay. They make pottery. They learn songs on flute, drum, and voice. They bake bread, tend seedlings, go on nature walks, and learn the names of plants that feed, heal, and color. They hear stories told by teachers who know that imagination is the foundation of all future thinking. They move their bodies through creative movement, music, and the joyful beginnings of capoeira, acrobatics and circus play.
Mornings follow a gentle, nourishing Waldorf-inspired rhythm — the gift of security through repetition. Afternoons open into Reggio-inspired project exploration — children follow their curiosity, build, create, and make things that matter to them.
Wild Roots · Ages 6–9
8 am to 2 pm, full day
November 2nd, 2026 to Easter 2027
& June to August 2027
For older children ready to go deeper. The same philosophy — but with more complexity, more skill, more challenge, and more responsibility.
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Permaculture design and biodynamic gardening. Pottery. Sewing and weaving with natural fibers and plant-based dyes. Nature crafts with found materials. Herbalism and plant wisdom — from seed to medicine to dye to story. Ensemble music — singing, drumming, flute, and world instruments. Acrobatics, circus arts, sports, and capoeira. Bread baking and healthy nutrition rooted in real food culture. Natural pigments, watercolor, and beeswax. Earth and ocean stewardship woven into every week.
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Inspired by Waldorf's understanding that arts are curriculum, Reggio's trust in children's own questions, Summerhill's belief in real agency, and Montessori's cosmic frame — Wild Roots gives children a day where every activity connects to every other. The plant they grow becomes the food they cook becomes the dye they use becomes the story they tell.
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This group follows Cosmic Education in English, connecting biology, history, geography, numbers, and letters within the great story of life on Earth. Alongside personalized and rigorous academic learning, children explore patterns in nature, origin stories, archetypes, and Indigenous ways of knowing through storytelling, observation, imagination, and hands-on discovery. They learn to read the world as they develop the skills to read, write, reason, and work confidently with numbers.
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Afternoons are dedicated to project-based learning — children choose, plan, and build real projects over weeks, developing focus, collaboration, and the deep satisfaction of finishing something that matters.
Earth Leaders · Ages 9–13
8 am to 2 pm, full day
November 23, 2026 to March 19, 2027
& June to August 2027
For the ones who are ready to lead.
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Earth Leaders takes everything the younger programs plant and grows it into something bigger — real skills, real responsibility, and real contribution to the community and the living world. Guided by the full range of Wild Child's pedagogical inspirations — and grounded in the democratic education tradition of Summerhill and the indigenous wisdom of Costa Rica — this program trusts young people with meaningful work and meaningful questions.
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The land: Advanced permaculture and biodynamic gardening. Regenerative design. Food sovereignty — understanding where food comes from, who controls it, and how communities can feed themselves. Fermentation, preservation, and traditional food preparation. Cooking real meals for the community.
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The arts: Deeper work in natural pigments, pottery, carpentry, sculpture, weaving, and sewing. Nature crafts as cultural practice. Music as ensemble and as performance.
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The body: Acrobatics, circus, and capoeira — with increasing mastery, discipline, and collaborative choreography. The body as instrument of strength, grace, and expression.
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The mind: Cosmic Education in English—weaving biology, ecology, history, and geography with Indigenous ways of knowing and the exploration of archetypes. Reading, writing, research, and critical thinking unfold through meaningful projects and real questions rooted in the natural world.
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The community: Leadership and ecological activism — not as theory but as practice. Earth Leaders take on real stewardship roles within the Wild Child community. They mentor younger children. They design and lead projects. They speak up for the land and the ocean. They begin to understand that they are not just growing up in Costa Rica — they are responsible for it.
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Afternoons are entirely project-based — long-arc, community-facing projects that leave something behind when the season ends.
While Wild Child now serves ages 1–13, children remain in distinct age-based learning groups designed to honor each developmental stage and protect the rhythm and atmosphere of early childhood.
Our mixed-age village model also offers beautiful opportunities for mentorship, leadership, and community connection, while the new 9–13 program provides a highly personalized and customized learning experience tailored to each child’s interests, strengths, and educational journey.
DigigtaDiit
DIGITAL LEARNING: Ages 10-13
2 - 4 pm, Aftercare
Thanksgiving to Easter 2027 & June to August 2027
Some families have asked whether Wild Child will integrate elements of digital learning for older children. While our core program remains deeply rooted in relationship-based, nature-centered, creative, and embodied learning, we are exploring a thoughtfully designed digital-learning aftercare program for ages 9–13, offered Monday through Friday from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. This optional program would support personalized academic pathways and introduce innovative learning tools in response to the evolving needs of our families.
The Thread That Runs Through Everything
Cultural and ecological awareness lives at the heart of all four programs.
A real, deep encounter with Costa Rica — its land, its water, its forests, its people, its traditions, its food, its language. Not as tourists passing through but as children putting down roots. Learning the names of the trees. Understanding why the rivers matter. Hearing the stories told here for generations.​
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Spanish immersion happens the way language is truly learned — through song, story, play, and daily life.
Not taught. Absorbed.
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Earth and ocean stewardship is woven into every day across every age group — caring for living systems with our hands and learning to speak up for them with our voices.​
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Healthy nutrition is part of the curriculum at every level. Children who grow food, cook food, and understand where food comes from develop a relationship with nourishment that lasts a lifetime.
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Music runs through the entire day — from the morning song that opens Tiny Roots to the ensemble playing of Earth Leaders. Drumming, singing, flute, and world instruments. Rhythm as the foundation of learning.
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Costa Rica has one of the most extraordinary natural and cultural environments on Earth. The Green Season is when it truly comes alive — when the waterfalls run full, the frogs sing at night, and the garden grows faster than you can keep up.
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Your child will know this place. Not as a visitor. As someone who belongs here. Held by a team of specialist teachers who are practitioners first in music, movement, permaculture, herbalism, leadership, and the art of truly seeing a child.
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Inspired by Waldorf, Reggio Emilia, Forest School, Summerhill, Montessori, and the indigenous wisdom of this extraordinary land. It grows a little wilder every day.
Come grow with us.
This Place. This Season. Your Child.
Kids Moon Club
Thursday
4:30pm-7:30pm
An enchanting evening where children explore the phases of the moon through playful activities, science, creativity, and mindfulness. Under the night sky, kids dive into lunar mysteries with hands-on experiences that spark curiosity and imagination.
Highlights include free play in our geodesic dome—circus-like, creative, and full of movement.
Parents enjoy a peaceful night out while children learn, connect, move, and play in a safe, inspiring space. More than babysitting—a cosmic adventure that nurtures curiosity, creativity, and mindfulness.
Wild Child Nosara
WORLDSCHOOLING HUb
Wild Child is more than a school.
It is a landing place for globally minded families seeking community, continuity, beauty, and deeper roots.
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Over the years, Wild Child has naturally become a home for worldschoolers, unschoolers, homeschooling families, creatives, entrepreneurs, artists, remote workers, and nomadic families moving between cultures, countries, and ways of life.
Many of the families who find us are raising children beyond the boundaries of conventional education. They believe learning happens everywhere through travel, relationship, nature, culture, creativity, meaningful work, and lived experience.
We do too.
​At the same time, we understand that nomadic families also need grounding. Rhythm. Belonging. Trusted adults. Consistency. Community.
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Wild Child offers a place where children can feel rooted while remaining open to the world. A place where families can arrive for a few weeks, a season, or longer, and immediately feel part of an ecosystem of relationships. Some families come during the Peak Season and return every year. Others stay through the Green Season for deeper immersion. Some integrate homeschooling or online academics alongside our programs. Others seek personalized pathways blending Waldorf, Montessori, Reggio Emilia, Forest School, leadership education, movement arts, ocean stewardship, and bilingual learning.
There is no single model of learning here.
Only a shared belief: that childhood should remain alive, relational, meaningful, creative, and deeply connected to the real world.
For many families, Wild Child becomes more than a stop along the journey.
What begins as a vacation in Nosara often turns into a longer stay because families discover a community, rhythm, and way of learning that feels like home.
Our Philosophy
Wild Child doesn't belong to a single pedagogy. Our curriculum is inspired by the wisdom of many traditions — each one chosen because it serves children, this land, and this moment in history.
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Waldorf gives us rhythm, beauty, and the understanding that imagination is the foundation of all future thinking. That arts are not extras. That a child who kneads bread, tends a seedling, or hears a story told by a living voice is doing the most important work of their life.
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Reggio Emilia gives us the belief that children are capable, curious, and full of their own ideas. That the environment is the third teacher. That documentation and deep listening matter. That projects emerge from children's genuine questions — not from a predetermined plan.
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Forest School gives us the outdoors as the primary classroom. Mud, rain, roots, and insects. The understanding that risk, challenge, and unstructured time in nature build resilience, confidence, and a relationship with the living world that no indoor curriculum can replicate.
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Leadership education and Earth & Ocean Stewardship give children the understanding that their voice matters, that they are not powerless observers of the world but active participants in it. Children are invited to think critically and creatively, to act with alignment and discernment, and to understand sovereignty not as domination, but as responsibility. We believe children are gifts to this world — capable of becoming compassionate leaders, changemakers, bridge-builders, protectors of life, and human beings who know how to stand in right relationship with themselves, others, and the Earth.
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Summerhill and democratic education give us respect for the child as a whole person with real rights, real choices, and real agency. Children here are not managed. They are trusted.
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Indigenous wisdom — and specifically the living knowledge traditions of Costa Rica — give us the deepest roots of all. The names of the plants. The ways of reading the land, the water, and the sky. The understanding that humans are not separate from nature, managing it from the outside — we are part of it, accountable to it, nourished by it.
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Montessori's Cosmic Education gives the older children the biggest possible frame — the story of the universe, the emergence of life, the arc of human civilization — so that everything they learn has a place in a larger whole.
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All of it held together by one belief: childhood is not preparation for life. It is life itself.