The educational project La Semilla is a space self-managed by families where our children enjoy an education based on respectful and emotional accompaniment, the importance of play, non-directivity, learning based on environments, the child as the centre of learning, self-evaluation, peaceful conflict resolution, observation and experiential learning.
We are people who live in several villages in the Sierra de Aracena y Picos de Aroche (Huelva). Many of us have moved here because of what the Seed brings us, as well as believing in a more peaceful way of life and more in touch with our nature.
Our space
We provide our children with a space in which they can develop all their potentialities, feeling cared for with respect and affection, in a prepared and safe environment.
The physical space is equipped with the necessary materials for independent learning in the different areas, distributed "by corners".
The corners are specifically designed for each subject: reading, writing and library, arithmetic, painting, geography and geology, physics, plastic arts, biology and natural sciences, carpentry, electronics and mechanics, history, gross and fine psychomotor skills, chemistry, symbolic play, music, expression, etc.
The children get to know the material and can use it when their interest leads them to do so, as well as the attention and accompaniment of an adult for their activity.
Bat House
House of the tigers
Psychomotricity Room
Room for Creations and Expression
The Exterior
Pedagogical principles
We respect the children's way of understanding the world:
We try to get to know the way of interpreting the world in which the child lives, in order to respect it and give it value. It is not up to them to understand realities in the same way that we do, but from their child's mind.
We rely on natural authority:
There is an authority that concerns us as adult beings and responsible for the space, and it exists naturally, it is not necessary to impose it nor do we use it to decide or intervene in what does not correspond to us. Children give us credibility because they trust us. It is not necessary to organise, it is not necessary to control or exercise power, however, it is necessary to take responsibility for this reality.
We provide the right environment:
The child must have within his reach the stimuli appropriate to his moment. This is what we call "the right or prepared environment". The right environment would be one that is adapted to the child so that he/she can have the most appropriate experiences for him/herself and can thus fulfil his/her developmental programme more fully.
We think that limits:
They are a necessary reality for all people.
We are correct with language:
Both verbal and non-verbal.
We respect life processes:
We allow and facilitate the path that each person chooses.
We value all learning equally:
We do not have obligatory or desirable contents, each person chooses to learn what they want and when they want, and from "La Semilla" everything has the same value: learning to write, to hammer a nail or to play with sand.
