About Our Free Minds
- Our Free Minds is a consent-based, self-directed community for home-educated children and young people.
- We create environments where young people can explore what matters to them, build relationships, and engage in self-directed learning, supported by attentive and respectful adults.
- We are not a school and do not provide full-time education. Our Free Minds offers supplementary opportunities that sit alongside each family’s home education approach.
THREE main features
Self-Directed
Community-Focused
Self-Directed
- Choosing what, when and how you engage, based on what feels meaningful to you.
- Learning to listen to and trust yourself to explore the world in yor own way .
- Letting go of external expectations about what is (or is not) important to learn.
- Developing a sense of responsibility for your time, your path, and your engagement.
Consent-Based
Community-Focused
Self-Directed
- Understanding your own agency and autonomy - and the freedom and boundaries that come with that.
- Learning to say an authentic yes, no or maybe - and respecting the consent and boundaries of others.
- Learning to communicate thoughts and feelings in ways that are clear, respectful, and constructive.
Community-Focused
Community-Focused
Community-Focused
- Making use of shared resources and opportunities with awareness of others.
- Building relationships across ages and backgrounds within a mixed community
- Navigating risk, conflict, and challenge together in open and supportive ways.
- Learning to respond to the needs of the community and contribute to its development.
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A Day At Group
SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING ADVENTURES
There is no such thing as a “typical day” at Our Free Minds.
Each day is shaped by the young people present — their interests, energy, ideas, and relationships.
Our day is framed by the Morning Meeting at around 10am, creating a shared space where plans, ideas, and possibilities can be explored. From there, the day unfolds in different ways.
Young people are free to choose how they spend their time. They may join activities, start their own projects, spend time in conversation, or simply take time to rest or observe.
Facilitators are present to support, offer ideas, share skills, and respond when needed — but do not direct or determine how children use their time.
Exploring Ourselves
Exploring Ourselves
Exploring Ourselves
- Our high facilitator-to-child ratio allows for children to have plenty of individual as well as group attention.
- We offer all our young people regular one to one mentoring sessions with a facilitator.
- Our daily meeting provides opportunities for group discussions and consent-based agreements.
- Navigating relationships, conflict, and
- Our high facilitator-to-child ratio allows for children to have plenty of individual as well as group attention.
- We offer all our young people regular one to one mentoring sessions with a facilitator.
- Our daily meeting provides opportunities for group discussions and consent-based agreements.
- Navigating relationships, conflict, and repair are a natural and important part of being at Group.
- Projects are self-directed and self-managed: young people have the opportunity to be bored and create their own motivation and direction.
Exploring The World
Exploring Ourselves
Exploring Ourselves
- Using the microscope to look closely at plants and insects.
- Cultivating our own pollinator-friendly, fruit and veg beds.
- Creating Marble Runs and learning about how to build more stable and efficient systems.
- Testing and comparing different household liquids with pH test strips, and used tables and graphs to compile and compare the d
- Using the microscope to look closely at plants and insects.
- Cultivating our own pollinator-friendly, fruit and veg beds.
- Creating Marble Runs and learning about how to build more stable and efficient systems.
- Testing and comparing different household liquids with pH test strips, and used tables and graphs to compile and compare the data.
- Using our scrap paper to make paper pulp, and using the mould and deckle to turn that into new paper.
Creativity
Exploring Ourselves
Communication
- Creating tiny houses in clay, cardboard, mud and mixed media, and imagining the lives of inhabitants.
- Exploring centripetal force with an electrical art spinner.
- Using pairs of compasses and rulers to create intricate geometric patterns and turn them into mandala images or other artworks.
- Sketching outdoors to practice our pencil ski
- Creating tiny houses in clay, cardboard, mud and mixed media, and imagining the lives of inhabitants.
- Exploring centripetal force with an electrical art spinner.
- Using pairs of compasses and rulers to create intricate geometric patterns and turn them into mandala images or other artworks.
- Sketching outdoors to practice our pencil skills and look at nature up close and at a distance (insects,wildlife, plants, cloudscapes, landscapes).
- Exploring a range of media including powders, paints, clays, pencils, pens, graphics pad.
- Baking and cooking.
- Doodling on the giant collaborative sheet on the meeting table
Communication
Physical Development
Communication
- Using story cards to create our own collaborative modern fairytales.
- Creating stop motion animation videos.
- Devising our own dramatic interpretations of stories and plays, and working on plays written by members.
- Devising Dungeons and Dragons scenarios and taking part in games.
- Word games such as “Poetry For Neanderthals” (focussed
- Using story cards to create our own collaborative modern fairytales.
- Creating stop motion animation videos.
- Devising our own dramatic interpretations of stories and plays, and working on plays written by members.
- Devising Dungeons and Dragons scenarios and taking part in games.
- Word games such as “Poetry For Neanderthals” (focussed on getting meaning across with single syllable words), "Bananagrams" (creating words from a pool of letters) and "Codenames" (making links between words so your teammate can guess them)
- Writing stories, poems and articles and scripts.
- Using Minecraft: learning the words for the passwords, finding a world, choosing an item and using the laptop keyboard.
Physical Development
Physical Development
Physical Development
- Marco Polo, Chaos tag, Capture the Flag and other running games.
- Variations of ball games, climbing, skipping, running, jumping.
- Exploring the outdoor space and using the rope swings and ladder
- Gymnastics challenges and Yoga sessions.
- Dance choreography and creating dance shows.
- Twister games and Balance challenges.
- Obstacle cours
- Marco Polo, Chaos tag, Capture the Flag and other running games.
- Variations of ball games, climbing, skipping, running, jumping.
- Exploring the outdoor space and using the rope swings and ladder
- Gymnastics challenges and Yoga sessions.
- Dance choreography and creating dance shows.
- Twister games and Balance challenges.
- Obstacle courses and hurdling races.
- Visits to the local park
Strategy & Logic
Physical Development
Physical Development
- Logic puzzles, chess and board games
- Gathering data from science experiments and presenting it in table and graph form.
- Collecting names for start up games, and taking votes.
- Measuring ingredients for baking, working in fractions and converting.
- Measuring time and distance eg in long jump tournaments or hurling competitions.
- Using
- Logic puzzles, chess and board games
- Gathering data from science experiments and presenting it in table and graph form.
- Collecting names for start up games, and taking votes.
- Measuring ingredients for baking, working in fractions and converting.
- Measuring time and distance eg in long jump tournaments or hurling competitions.
- Using pairs of compasses to create mandalas and tesselations or geometric designs.
- Building understanding of shape and directional and geometric language by creating origami.
- Applying geometry in woodwork and junk modelling creations.
Who We Are
Not a School!
Our Free Minds is a community-based, supplementary provision that supports home-educated children and young people. We are not a school and do not provide full-time education, a curriculum, or a programme of instruction. Our role is to offer a safe, relational environment where young people can explore their interests and engage in self-directed learning. Responsibility for each child’s education remains with their parent or carer at all times.
The children have been attending for a year now and, if anything, we feel even more positive about it. It’s been wonderful to see them grow in confidence, skill and maturity over this time - all without the traditional top-down methods of mainstream schools.
Parents of Flower and Seano