our village
A village is not a program. It is a way of being together.
Children need more than curriculum. They need land, time, relationship, and adults who trust the process of growing up.
How we began
Born from a need for community
Wild Village began in the aftermath of COVID, when a small pod of families came together and decided that, rather than spending our days inside with the children, we would take our time together outdoors. We began meeting in nature — at creeks, on trails, under trees, and along the coast — and something important happened. The children had room to move, explore, build, climb, wonder, and learn through experience. The adults had space to slow down, talk, observe, connect, and begin building relationships with one another too.
From there, the village grew naturally. We met other families in the neighborhood, through infant and toddler classes, and along the way. We invited people who felt like a good fit for the community we were creating. They invited friends. And sometimes they invited someone they simply sensed needed what we had begun to find ourselves: a community, a place to belong, a village. Over the years, the children who were there at the beginning have grown. New babies have arrived. Younger children have become older children, and new families continue to find their way into the village. The places where we gather have changed too — sometimes by choice and sometimes because the landscape itself has changed through fire, weather, and time.
Wild Village is still a place families can return to again and again — to familiar land, familiar people, freedom to explore, and a community that knows them as they grow. Children are held by trusted adults who come to know them over time, and parents are given something rare too: space to slow down, witness themselves and their children more clearly, build real friendships, and become part of a community where they do not have to parent alone.
The children have grown. The parents have grown. The village has grown. The landscape has changed. The heart of it has remained the same: families growing together in relationship, in community, and in the natural world.
What we believe
The Science of Belonging
01
Attachment first
Children learn through relationships they trust. Before any curriculum, we build connection — with one another, with the land, and with the wider community.
02
The body knows
Regulation comes before learning. A child who is cold, hungry, dysregulated, or disconnected cannot take in new information. We attend to the nervous system before we attend to the lesson.
03
Nature as teacher
The creek, the oak, the tide pool, the hawk overhead — these are not backdrops. They are the curriculum. The natural world is the primary learning environment because nothing else can replace it.
04
Competence through challenge
Children need to do hard things. Carry heavy logs. Cross cold water. Build something that falls and try again. Competence is not given — it is earned through real experience with real stakes.
05
Community as container
No child grows in isolation. Wild Village is built on the understanding that children need a village — a consistent group of known adults and peers who show up together, season after season.
06
Slow is fast
We resist the pressure to accelerate childhood. Deep roots grow slowly. A child who has been allowed to be fully present in each stage of development arrives at adulthood with something solid inside.
Our approach
Rooted in the Work of Being Human
Wild Village draws from developmental science, interpersonal neurobiology, attachment and regulation research, nature-based education, and pedagogical approaches including inquiry-based, experiential, place-based, and project-based learning. These perspectives help us understand how humans grow through relationship, embodied experience, meaningful challenge, curiosity, and connection to place.
Humans who develop regulatory capacity, secure relationships, embodied confidence, curiosity, persistence, and a sense of belonging become powerful participants in their own lives. At Wild Village, these capacities are not separate from learning; they are part of how meaningful learning takes root for children and adults alike.
We are present with children, attentive to development, supportive of regulation, and intentional about creating environments for inquiry. We move competently through outdoor spaces and know when to step forward, when to offer support, and when to leave room. We are not simply delivering content; we are helping create the conditions in which children can explore, connect, take appropriate risks, build competence, and learn.
Our land
The Santa Monica Mountains and the Malibu coast
Wild Village is rooted in two landscapes: the oak woodland, chaparral, and seasonal creek environments of the Santa Monica Mountains, and the rocky shore, tide pools, and open beach of the Malibu coast. These are not interchangeable venues. Each place has its own ecology, its own demands, and its own quality of attention. The mountains ask for patience and observation. The coast asks for alertness and wonder. Children who return to both, season after season, develop a layered and genuine relationship with the natural world of Southern California — its changing weather, water, geology, plants, and wildlife. But learning a place also means learning the human stories held there.
Over the years our children have begun to explore the lives and knowledge of the Chumash people who lived in relationship with these landscapes long before us. Our learning about the Tongva people and their relationship with the coastal and inland landscapes of this region is still growing. The homelands of the Chumash and Tongva met and overlapped in parts of the Santa Monica Mountains and Malibu, making this region a place of connection as well as distinction between the two peoples. We want that to be an ongoing part of how we come to know the places where we gather — not as a single lesson or acknowledgment, but as part of understanding that land carries human history as well as natural history.
Belonging to a place takes time. It asks us to notice what lives there now, to understand something of what came before us, and to care about what happens there after we leave. We give children that time.
Come and see what a village feels like.
We welcome families who are ready to slow down, step outside, and trust that something important is happening — even when it looks like play.