Village GreenMicroschool Visit the green

Burlington, Vermont · A parent-built microschool

A small school that grows from the green up.

Village Green is a parent-built microschool on the green: mixed-age learning, project-based work, outdoor days, and families building it together in Burlington.

See what students are making Plan a visit
  • Mixed-age classrooms
  • Project-based learning
  • Outdoor education
  • Parent co-op & enrichment classes
Children of different ages working together at a table in a bright, plant-filled room
Morning workMixed-age room

On the board

Outdoor day — dress for mud, sun, and everything in between.

Project-based learning

Learning is a shared project.

Nothing here is done alone at a desk. Students choose the work, follow it where it goes, and bring it back to the group to show, explain and defend.

A child and an adult measuring and taping cardboard on a work table
In progressCardboard, string, tape
  • 01

    A question comes up

    Projects start with something the group actually wonders about — how a bridge holds, where the water goes, what lives in the soil.

  • 02

    The work crosses ages

    Older kids take the parts that need longer hands and patience. Younger ones ask the questions that keep it honest.

  • 03

    It moves outside

    Whatever can be measured, built or found outdoors goes outdoors, in whatever weather the day is offering.

  • 04

    It gets pinned up

    Finished or not, the work goes on the board where everyone can see it, add to it, and ask about it.

Outdoor education

Outdoor days, in any weather.

A good part of the week happens outside: the walk, the woods, the garden beds, and the noticing that only comes from being somewhere often enough to see it change.

  • Forest and field days
  • Garden beds and growing things
  • Weather, all of it
  • The walk there and back
Children in rain boots walking a leaf-strewn woodland path in autumn
Outdoor dayThe walk out
An older child crouched beside a younger child, both pointing at a book on the floor
One roomReading together

Mixed-age classrooms

Older hands, younger eyes, one room.

Children stay with the same group and the same adults, so the room keeps its history. The youngest watch how the work is done before they can do it; the oldest get good at explaining what they already know.

Nobody is sorted into a row by birthday. A child who is ready for more finds it in the room, and a child who needs longer gets longer.

  • Same adultsFamiliar faces, term after term, with the whole group known by name.
  • Real workTasks that a child can genuinely hold, at the depth they can hold it.
  • Sharing outExplaining your thinking to a younger kid is the best test of whether you understand it.

Parent co-op & enrichment

The school is built by the families in it.

Village Green is a co-op. Parents share the teaching, the driving, the garden and the decisions — and the enrichment classes come from the same room, from what the people here already know.

Parents and children working together in raised garden beds in late afternoon light
Garden afternoonFamilies on the beds

Visit the green

Come and see a day in progress.

The room, the board, the table where the work happens, and the people who keep it going — mixed-age classrooms, project-based learning, outdoor days and the co-op behind all of it.

See what students are making See how the co-op works