Before each weeks El Lab(erinto), Wendy the Witch, Nicole the Gardener, Eva the Curator and Rafa the Professor, along with a series of guests, gather ideas and provocations to guide two mixed-age groups through books, activities, conversations, and questions. Themes can sprout from what is happening within Mi Casita and from what is happening in the world outside.

• We come ready to receive.

• We lead with curiosity.

• We listen to all the languages of children. 

• We thicken stories and conversations.

• We ask circular questions, especially about children's perspectives.

• We trust the process and slow down. 

• The relational experience is in itself of value.

Rituals and Surprises are like the soil.

Rituals root us, and surprises keep us fresh. Together, this creates a dance of a relationship, a classroom, or a community.  Rituals often contain a surprise, like a birthday party or show and tell, and the best surprises sometimes turn into a ritual, like a date, a conference, a playdate, or a parade. The dance between rituals and surprises creates community. 

IMPORTANT: FOR SAFETY ALL ADULTS MUST BE ACCOMPANIED BY THEIR INNER CHILD.

A letter to families from Wendy, Mi Casita's mentor, matriarch fairy godmother:

Hola Familias, 

It is my sacred pleasure to write to you about a project I am involved in with co-administrators/leaders/artists of Mi Casita. First, please let me introduce or re-introduce myself.  My name is Wendy Jo Cole, and I served as the early childhood director at Maple Street for two decades. When I stepped down in 2022, I worked at Mi Casita as a Matriarch, and also in the fields of interspiritual ministry, spiritual direction, therapy, and family therapy. 

Rafa, Eva, and I, and now Nicole, would spend hours together weaving together the wisdom of early childhood with ideas from the fields of therapy, family therapy, spirituality, storytelling, the earth, the cosmos, and more. 

We would light up and geek out as we talked about Learning Stories, Reggio Emilia, Narrative Therapy, Art Making, processes, portals, and poetry. 

Eva then asked me if I would do something with Mi Casita this year, and what we are calling El Lab was born. The Lab is an incubator and a greenhouse for children's ideas, curricula, and culture. 

It is still tiny and in the formation stages, growing little seeds of imagination, poems, and stories.

con amor,

WENDY JO COLE

Guiding ideas: Principals we set out to explore each week

Ingredients for today’s Lab: aka the provocations. These are the materials we thoughtfully arrange as invitations for the amigues to explore.

What just happened?!: In this section we invite you see what actually happened. What did the children say? What did they do, feel, think, hear, smell, invent, remember…

Photos an videos

What does it mean to be unapologetically bilingual?

THE WITCH- Wendy Cole

THE GARDENER- Nicole Costa

THE CURATOR- Eva Ruiz

THE PROFESOR- Rafa Perez Segura

guests:

THE COLECIONISTA- Claudia Zarroca Ortega

THE GRIOT- Isabel Ratner

LA BRUJA- Ariel Paulina

EL MUSICO- Stuart Bogie

THE TULIP KING and Ant Expert- David Tockman and Camilo

THE ANT ARTIST- Carles G’O-D

¡EL LAB! invites grown ups (bankers, bakers, parents, artists, scientists, dreamers, nannies, ornithologist,friends, writer, thinkers, bankers musicians, or whomever) to come and play. To be invited you must be nominated.

If you would like to nominate a grown up for LAB

Nominate your grown-up at this link.

• Tell us their name,

• Contact info, and

• The reason you think they are a good candidate. (inc. skills, talents, stories, etc)

FOR SAFETY REASONS ALL ADULTS MUST BE ACCOMPANIED BY THEIR INNER CHILD