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Wonder and Flourish, Adelaide (2026)

14/08/2026

Belief #6 - The environment matters.

The environment is never neutral. It is communicating all the time. This is why, in Reggio inspired spaces, you may often hear the environment referred to as the third teacher. it doesn’t replace the teacher, rather it works alongside adults and children in the space, continually shaping what children notice, wonder about, encounter and believe is possible.

The environment doesn’t always need to explain. Sometimes it’s most powerful role is to provoke. To offer a possibility rather than an answer. To create space for questions and exploration. To allow creativity to flourish.

We can create environments that tell children:

Sit still.
Wait for instructions.
There is one right answer.
Don’t touch.
Don’t make a mess.
The important learning happens when the teacher is talking.

Or we can create environments that say:

Look.
Wonder.
Try.
Touch.
Question.
Stay.
Create something.
Change your mind.
Follow that thought.
I trust you to discover something I haven’t anticipated.

That second environment doesn’t just contain learning. It participates in it.

And perhaps that’s why the environment matters so deeply in childhood, because long after the adults stop speaking, the room is still telling children what we believe about learning…and what we believe about them.

11/08/2026

Belief #5 - Joy and delight are worthy educational goals.

We have become very good at asking children’s experiences to justify themselves.

What are they learning?
What skill is being developed?
What is the educational outcome?

And of course, there are times where these questions have their place. But sometimes, I wonder if we ask them too quickly.

Because not everything a child does needs to lead to something.

Sometimes a child should dance recklessly because they love the feeling of the music pulsing through their body.

Sometimes they should paint simply because they love the feel of the brush gliding across the paper.

Sometimes they should collect shells just because they are beautiful.

Sometimes they should climb, build, sing, make, read or spend 20 minutes looking for worms in the garden – just because they are captivated.

Not everything needs to become a lesson.
Not every experience needs to be leverage for learning.

Sometimes delight is enough.

And perhaps joy is not something that sits outside education, waiting to be earned once the ‘important’ work is finished. Perhaps joy, wonder, immersion and delight are part of what makes learning meaningful in the first place.

Because childhood is not preparation for life - it IS life.

And if education is about helping children flourish, then surely we should care not only about what they know, but about whether they are developing an appreciation for the world – a desire to notice it, explore it, question it and delight in it.

Some things are worth doing because they teach us something.

And some things are worth doing simply because they make us feel wonderfully, joyfully alive.

I think both belong in childhood.
Perhaps delight is an educational outcome in itself.

10/08/2026

Belief #4 - The process matters more than the product.

Perhaps the most important part of what a child creates isn’t what they produce at the end.

It’s who they become along the way.

The hands that wonder.
The mind that questions.
The courage to try again.
The freedom to change direction.
The joy in discovery.

A painting doesn’t need to be perfect.
A tower doesn’t need to stand.
A poem can be left half composed.
A question doesn’t always need an answer.

Because childhood is not a race towards a finished product. It is a time for exploring, imagining, making meaning and discovering the world - and themselves, within it.

So perhaps our role is not always to help children arrive at the ‘right’ result. Perhaps it’s to slow down enough to notice, and enjoy, the richness of the journey.

To trust their ideas.
To make space for their theories.
To value the attempt as much as the outcome.

Because the product is what we can see.
The process is where the ‘becoming’ happens.

A product is finished.
A child is not.

04/08/2026

Belief #3 – Beauty slows us down and helps us notice

My learning environment was once described as ‘decorative’. I chuckle when I think about it now, although if I’m honest – at the time it felt like an affront. After some reflection however, I realised that this person was describing what she thought she saw, rather than understanding the belief that underpinned what she saw.

You see, if wonder is the spark, and curiosity is the movement towards understanding, then perhaps beauty is what creates the conditions for both. Beauty invites our attention, requesting nothing of us except that we notice. Remember, before there is knowledge, there is noticing.

The environments we create for children silently tell them what we value and believe is important. Beauty communicates that what happens in that space matters, and is therefore a form of respect. Children deserve intentionality in their spaces. It is part of how they learn to honour, revere and care for, the world around them.

For me, creating beautiful learning environment is not about aesthetics or ‘decoration’ – it’s a pedagogical decision. It means that I value:
- Thoughtfully prepared spaces that allow children’s thinking to emerge
- Natural light and connections to the outside world
- Carefully chosen materials that invite exploration rather than overwhelm
- Cozy, homely nooks that invite children in and make them feel safe and welcomed
- Space intentionally left for what the children wish to share/ documentation of thinking rather than displays that are often not accessed by children anyway

Beauty is not an ‘extra’ – it is one of the most powerful teachers in the room. I wonder then, if true education should begin less with curriculum or outcomes and more with beauty. Perhaps that could change the focus from “what do you know?” to “What do you notice?” and that shift changes everything.

04/08/2026

Belief #2 - Curiosity is not a distraction from learning, but the beginning of it.

I once had a teacher remark to me that she was frustrated by the questions her students were asking because, despite being at least somewhat related to the topic at hand, it was “veering them off track from what they were supposed to be learning”.

Here’s my take, as someone who has played a role in the education of hundreds of children, as well as my own. Children can be given facts all day long, but facts only become meaningful when they answer a question the learner genuinely has. Curiosity gives information somewhere to land. Without curiosity, knowledge often remains external, but with it, knowledge becomes personal.

As the adult, I cannot create curiosity, but I can create conditions in my environment where curiosity survives and these conditions often look surprisingly simple:
- unhurried time
- open-ended materials
- rich environments
- adults who value questions more than quick answers
- permission to linger, experiment and explore
- relational and psychological safety to be wrong

In my learning environments, wonder and curiosity are not competing ideas – they are sequential. If Wonder says “something here is extraordinary”, then Curiosity replies, “I want to know more about it”.

Some of the deepest learning emerges when children are free to follow a thread of interest without knowing where it will lead. No longer do I believe education is primarily about delivering knowledge, I believe education is about stewarding curiosity. Therefore the question is not how to make children curious, the question is how not to extinguish it.

03/08/2026

Revisiting ‘Wonder and Flourish’.

Years ago - this name came to me and encapsulated so many of my beliefs surrounding childhood, connection and education. Perhaps it’s time I share some of those beliefs.

Belief 1 - Wonder is where flourishing begins.

Wonder isn’t merely saying “That’s interesting.” It is the experience of meeting something bigger than yourself with curiosity rather than control.

Wonder only exists in the present moment. It demands attentiveness - it asks us to notice. Children are naturally gifted at this. They stop to examine an ant carrying a crumb. They spend time watching sunlight dance across a wall. They ask impossible questions. They are not wasting time. They are practising the very disposition that makes lifelong learning possible.

Before a child wants to know, they first have to notice. Before they persevere, they first have to care. Before they create, they first have to be captivated. Wonder transforms the world from something to consume, into something to know, love and care for. That has profound implications for education. Children protect what they love.
They love what they’ve encountered deeply. And deep encounters begin with wonder.

Wonder cultivates humility. The more we wonder, the more we realise we don’t know. Wonder nurtures openness rather than certainty. Questions rather than answers. Listening rather than assuming.

Flourishing isn’t simply achievement - it’s becoming fully alive. And wonder seems to awaken nearly every quality associated with flourishing:

- Joy, because beauty delights us
- Curiosity, because intrigue invites exploration.
- Gratitude, because we recognise gifts over entitlements.
- Creativity, because we imagine possibilities
- Compassion, because wonder expands our awareness beyond ourselves.
- Belonging, because we experience ourselves as part of something bigger.

Wonder is not another developmental milestone - it’s the condition that allows many others to emerge. Perhaps the tragedy is not that children lose wonder, it’s that’s adults unintentionally teach them to.

02/08/2026

As I creep back to the grid, I do so with a fire raging deep within me. A passion for advocacy that I’ve felt a sense of trepidation about for far too long.

Gone is the need for a stylish, curated feed.
Gone is the crippling fear of offending somebody, lest they misunderstand my words or my heart. Gone is the concern that I don’t understand the algorithm and my role within it.

Here is the confidence in my philosophy, my beliefs and my why.
Here is the trust that the people who resonate or need reassurance will find me.
Here is the desire to connect and share and inspire and be inspired.
Here is the same goal that has always existed - to build community, to reclaim childhood, to wonder and to flourish.

If you’re new here, welcome. I feel like I am too. If you’re not, let’s do this - together. Xx

26/11/2023

Two main reasons have long guided my decision to home educate. One is the gift of time and togetherness that the home education lifestyle affords us, but the other is this - the preservation of childhood. The academic push down in the school system had concerned me even before I had children of my own and as a teacher I lamented frequently the lack of play, the decreased autonomy and the limited ‘pressure free’ time in our days in the classroom.

I wanted a different experience for my own children - a slower, more developmentally appropriate experience. An experience that valued the child’s right to be a child. Is it any wonder why we have so many adults who have trouble learning to just ‘be’ when their whole childhood was basically sold to them as a ‘training ground for adulthood’ - I believe it’s often why we are always striving for ‘the next thing’ instead of finding gratitude and fulfilment in the now - we were always taught that our time was spent the way it was because we were learning and working towards adulthood, careers, parenthood etc.

I truly believe we need to protect childhood. To value it for the magic and possibilities it holds just because of what it is.

If you have any questions about how to preserve childhood in your home through a life without school, today is the day! There is still time to book into our live zoom Q&A for tonight at 8pm ACST - we will close off bookings at 7pm. To book your spot and gain access to the replay, check out the bio at and we hope to chat to you there! 🍃

26/11/2023

I remember I had not been home educating long when my first (well meaning, no doubt) acquaintance asked if I was concerned about how my girls would go ‘in the real world’ if they did not attend school.

I remember thinking that, as a teacher, I knew better than most about how school is about as far away from ‘the real world’ as you can get.

I remember crafting a carefully worded response, gently asserting that I wasn’t worried because my girls would be spending every day in the real world - learning the skills that go along with being at the library, cooking a meal, playing team sports, attending workshops, visiting museums and galleries, talking with members of the community about all manner of things, taking care of nature, and ordering and paying for their own goods and services.

You see, it’s not that school cannot teach real world knowledge, it’s just that it primarily happens in a context totally removed from the real world. So for us, we opted for learning by immersion. By living life in that real world. And you can too, if you wish!

If you have questions about living a life without school, please join and I tomorrow for one of our live zoom Q&A’s. You can submit your questions in the private Facebook group beforehand.

🍃 When - Monday Nov 27
🍃 Time - 10am or 8pm ACST
🍃 Cost - $5 AUD

This is a worldwide accessible event and a replay will be emailed to you the following day. We can’t wait to connect with you! To book your spot - click the link in the bio of

01/11/2023

I’m baaaaack! With a fire in my belly and a message to share. So I’m starting off with my own quote. I was talking to a lady the other day about why I chose to homeschool and I said exactly that - “Because I believe that childhood should be less about ticking boxes and more about playing with boxes” and she said “Oooh you need to put that on a bumper sticker!”

I don’t have the know-how for bumper stickers, but I’ll knock up a Canva quote for sure! 🤣👍🏽

I mean it though. The longer I home educate, the longer I work with children in formal educational settings, the more I talk to parents and children, the more convinced I become that we are doing a great disservice to childhood by reducing it to a series of tick boxes and arbitrary outcomes. So much time is wasted, so much energy spent trying to formalise and institutionalise what comes so naturally to children - learning. And when we ‘do learning’ TO children…it’s rarely as helpful or joyful as we would like to believe it is.

So I’ll push aside the paper tickboxes in favour of the cardboard boxes any day of the week. Will you join me? ✨

Wonder and Flourish

14/08/2026

11/08/2026

10/08/2026

04/08/2026

04/08/2026

03/08/2026

02/08/2026

26/11/2023

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01/11/2023

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