From the Inquiry Institute
You're probably feeling it right now. That quiet weight at 9 a.m. when the house is too still and the lesson plan you spent Sunday night writing already feels wrong. The nagging fear that you're not enough. That your child is falling behind some invisible benchmark you can't even name.
You've Googled “am I ruining my child” at least once this month. We know. Because every parent who finds us has.
And it sounds like none of it has worked the way you hoped.
And then opened the app on Monday morning, stared at the grid, and felt more overwhelmed than before you started. Ideas aren't a curriculum. They're just noise arranged in rows.
It arrived in a beautiful package. By week three, your child was crying through the worksheets and you were wondering what you'd done wrong. The curriculum wasn't wrong. It just didn't know your child.
The social pressure. The comparison. The parents who seem to have it together while you're hiding in the car during drop-off, breathing into a paper bag. Community is vital. But community without structure is just a support group for chaos.
“How do I know it's working?”
A different kind of question
Not a static plan you force your family into. A living framework rooted in 100+ years of educational philosophy, shaped by your child's actual attention and readiness, tracked through verifiable microcredentials, and supported by a real mentor who listens before they advise.
Choose your philosophical path
Both Montessori and Waldorf/Steiner education have been refined for over a century. They differ in method but converge on what matters: the child is not a vessel to fill but a fire to kindle.
Maria Montessori (1870–1952) · Ages 2½–6
“Follow the child.”
The prepared environment. Freedom within limits. Hands as instruments of the mind. Your child chooses their work, masters it through repetition, and moves from concrete to abstract at their own pace. Every activity — pouring water, cutting a banana, tracing sandpaper letters — is purposeful, real, and deeply respectful.
Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) · Ages 2½–7
“Receive the child in reverence, educate in love, release in freedom.”
Rhythm and repetition. Imitation and warmth. The seasons as curriculum. Your child learns not through instruction but through the language of imagination — fairy tales told by candlelight, bread baked on the same day each week, watercolours flowing on wet paper. Head, heart, and hands, together.
What tomorrow looks like
Every day is already planned. Activities, materials, step-by-step instructions, age adaptations, and discussion prompts — all grounded in the philosophy you chose.
Week 1 · Monday
“Good morning, dear world. Good morning, dear hands. Today we will work, as our heart understands.”
The child learns how to greet another person: making eye contact, extending a hand, saying “Good morning.” This is a grace and courtesy lesson — one of the most important in the Montessori curriculum.
The child transfers dried beans from one bowl to another using a small jug. This classic Montessori exercise develops concentration, hand-eye coordination, and the pincer grip.
Materials
Steps
↑ This is a sample from Week 1. Your daily plan is served from our curriculum database, tailored to the philosophy you chose. Talk to a mentor to get started.
Not just stickers on a chart
When your child completes a week of Practical Life activities or finishes a month of Waldorf rhythm-keeping, they don't just get a gold star. They earn a W3C Verifiable Credential — a real, portable, cryptographically signed record of learning that follows them for life.
Built on Open Badges 3.0 and the Inquiry Institute's Three-Gate Assessment Model:
Your child demonstrates understanding through guided Socratic questioning — not rote answers, but the ability to reason, wonder, and discover.
Gentle, age-appropriate prompts that verify real understanding — transfer tasks, not memorisation drills.
Your assigned mentor reviews progress and attests to your child's growth. Two assessors. Confidence scores. Real accountability.
Practical Life
Montessori
Sensorial Explorer
Montessori
Rhythm Keeper
Waldorf
Young Storyteller
Waldorf
Mathematical Mind
Montessori
Nature Child
Waldorf
12+ microcredential badges per philosophy. Cumulative. Portable. Verified.
Attention Awareness · Stewarded by a.Weil
“We may have moved too quickly. Shall we pause briefly?”
Attentive
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Wandering
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Fatigued
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All signals probabilistic. On-device only. No raw video. No biometric storage. No surveillance.
Coming soon · Research Preview
Ægis is our experimental attention awareness platform. Using non-invasive EEG and camera-free gaze estimation, it gently detects when a child is attentive, wandering, confused, or fatigued — and suggests the curriculum adapt.
Not to score. Not to punish. Not to rank. To protect.
“Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as generosity.” — Simone Weil
Your mentor. Your pace.
Every family is paired with a mentor — a trained educator grounded in the philosophy you chose. They're not there to judge. They're there to ask the right questions.
Through the Inquiry Institute's maieutic approach, your mentor uses Socratic dialogue to help you discover insights about your child that a curriculum checklist never could. How does she concentrate? When does he shut down? What lights them up at 3 p.m. when the morning plan has crumbled?
Share observations, ask questions, celebrate wins.
Your mentor helps interpret microcredential progress and suggests next steps.
Your mentor serves as a credential assessor — verifying real learning, not test performance.
Your Mentor
Montessori · Online
The Inquiry Institute method
From Greek maieutikos, “of midwifery.” Just as Socrates described himself as a midwife of ideas, our approach helps children give birth to knowledge they already carry — through careful questioning, not lecturing. Through wonder, not worksheets.
“I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.” — Socrates
Activities are designed to provoke wonder and discovery, not deliver answers. The child is always the author of their own understanding.
Your mentor uses maieutic dialogue with you too — helping you see what your child needs before you reach for the answer key.
Microcredentials are issued only after maieutic dialogue (Gate 1) confirms genuine understanding — not rote completion.
A daily plan. A philosophical framework. Verifiable credentials. A mentor who asks the right questions. And a gentle instrument that knows when to pause.
No commitment. No sales call. Just a conversation about your child.