Project-based learning · Ojai, California
MANA is a project-based learning community where children develop confidence, creativity, leadership, emotional intelligence, and entrepreneurial thinking through meaningful work, nature, art, and service.
“My daughter would wake up so excited to go to MANA, and when I came to pick her up, she often didn’t want to leave. What stood out to me most was how much her creativity and confidence grew! She began approaching problems from completely new perspectives, finding her own solutions, and bringing that creative way of thinking home with her. She also developed a deeper confidence in herself, her ideas, and her ability to figure things out. By watching her ideas come to life, she began to believe that anything was possible, and that if she could imagine something, there was a way to create it. I truly believe MANA nurtured her natural creativity while helping her trust herself and her own abilities.”
Free community event
A free afternoon of making, nature, and community for kids ages 4–10. Meet our pod teachers and learn about the Homeschool Enrichment Program.
Welcome to MANA
At MANA, we believe children learn best when they are inspired by meaningful work, trusted with real responsibility, and surrounded by caring guides who help them discover their unique gifts.
Rather than separating learning into isolated subjects, we weave reading, writing, mathematics, science, history, art, entrepreneurship, communication, and service into authentic projects that matter.
MANA nurtures curiosity, character, creativity, compassion, leadership, and resilience.
Our philosophy
Education should protect that curiosity rather than replace it with compliance.
Drawing inspiration from project-based learning, child-led exploration, entrepreneurship, nature immersion, leadership development, and hands-on making, we created MANA as an environment where children actively build knowledge instead of passively receiving it and memorizing it.
The goal
Two learning pods
Explorers build the foundations of confident learning. Makers bring growing skill and independence to increasingly sophisticated work.
Ages 4–5
These early years lay the foundation for a lifetime of learning. Through storytelling, imaginative play, movement, nature, art, music, practical life activities, and sensory exploration, children develop confidence, emotional awareness, language, literacy, mathematics, creativity, and independence.
Ages 6–10
Older children engage in increasingly sophisticated projects that integrate entrepreneurship, leadership, public speaking, design thinking, collaborative problem-solving, and community service while continuing to master core academics through meaningful work.
What MANA means
Learning happens through making.
Children build their visions with tools, art supplies, building materials, engineering challenges, woodworking opportunities, design materials, recycled invention supplies, and open-ended creative resources.
Creativity isn’t an elective.
Art helps children express themselves through visual work, music, movement, theater, storytelling, filmmaking, photography, and collaborative creation.
Nature is one of our greatest teachers.
Children learn through observation, hiking, sketching, science investigations, outdoor reading, journaling, natural materials, ranch days, and stewardship.
Community begins with intention and reflection.
Children practice empathy, gratitude, responsibility, leadership, conflict resolution, self-awareness, listening, kindness, mindfulness, breathing techniques, and emotional regulation.
Kids Helping Kids
Children don’t learn entrepreneurship simply to make money. They learn entrepreneurship as a way to serve the world.
Each year students are paired with children living in orphanages that Brandee and her family have supported for more than fifteen years. Students build real businesses whose profits directly benefit their partner communities.
Every student creates a professional portfolio documenting the journey from initial idea to final product launch. More importantly, they witness the tangible impact their work has on another child’s life.
Learning in the world
Each month MANA explores a different civilization or Indigenous culture through stories, architecture, engineering, inventions, art, music, food, geography, ecological knowledge, craftsmanship, and values.
Throughout the year children also participate in meaningful service projects with local organizations, nonprofits, artists, farms, elders, and businesses.
Meet our guides
Waldorf-Trained Educator · Choreographer · Community Curator · Relationship & Communication Facilitator
Sonya is a Waldorf-trained educator, choreographer, theater creator, community curator, and facilitator who has spent more than 25 years working with children, families, and communities through movement, creativity, nature, and hands-on learning.
Her diploma in Waldorf Education from Taruna College in New Zealand prepared her to work with children ages 4–13 through experiential, whole-child education. Having lived and worked on biodynamic farms, Sonya brings a deep connection to the natural world and a belief that children learn through their hands, hearts, bodies, and minds.
She has taught dance for many years and is an accomplished tap dance teacher and choreographer. She has also created and directed theater productions with children, giving young people opportunities to step onto a stage, find their voice, collaborate with others, and bring an idea to life.
Sonya is passionate about creating environments where children feel connected—to themselves, to one another, to nature, and to their community. Her work in communication and relationship facilitation brings another important dimension to MANA, helping children develop the skills to express themselves, listen deeply, navigate differences, collaborate, and build healthy relationships.
She is also deeply experienced in permaculture, gardening, food systems, and sustainable living. Her years of working with the land have given her a practical understanding of how children can develop a genuine relationship with nature by growing food, caring for animals, and participating in the living systems around them.
As a co-creator of MANA, Sonya helps shape the culture and daily experience of the school. She brings warmth, imagination, movement, and a beautiful ability to turn everyday experiences into opportunities for connection and learning.
At MANA, Sonya helps children discover that learning can be an adventure—and that who they are becoming matters just as much as what they are learning.
Artist · Maker Educator · Photographer · Nature Guide · Co-Creator of MANA
Amir Magal is an artist, maker educator, photographer, videographer, nature guide, and co-creator of MANA. For more than 20 years, Amir has been creating transformative experiences for children through nature, making, art, adventure, and hands-on learning.
He has founded and led nature camps for children for more than two decades and spent many years creating children’s experiences at festivals and large community gatherings. His work brings children into a world of building, exploring, experimenting, creating, and discovering what they are capable of.
Amir is also the creator of Tribal Makers, an educational approach centered on hands-on making, creative confidence, and purposeful projects. He helps children see themselves as artists, designers, builders, and problem-solvers who can take an idea from imagination into the physical world.
Many of the children who are now part of MANA have known Amir for years through his camps, nature programs, and maker experiences. He has been a meaningful part of their childhoods—and in Brandee’s family, that relationship goes back nearly two decades. All five of Brandee’s children have grown up creating, exploring, and learning with Amir.
As a professional photographer and videographer, Amir also brings a strong visual and artistic eye to MANA, documenting experiences while teaching children to see the world through a creative lens.
As a co-creator of MANA, Amir helps shape the school’s maker culture and experiential approach. His work with children is grounded in curiosity, experimentation, craftsmanship, resilience, and play. He loves giving children the freedom to get messy, try something they’ve never done before, make mistakes, and discover that they can create far more than they imagined.
At MANA, Amir brings the spirit of the maker—the belief that children learn deeply when they have the freedom to build, explore, get curious, and bring their ideas to life.
Children’s food culture expert · founder of Earth Food First
Lindsay Navama is a children’s food culture expert, certified Integrative Nutrition Health Coach, cookbook author, poet, mama, and founder of Earth Food First — an innovative platform transforming how we nourish the next generation.
She is leading the movement to bring taste education to America, equipping families and schools with a sensory-based, research-informed curriculum that empowers children to confidently embrace a wide variety of whole foods — a foundational life skill for lifelong physical and mental health.
Entrepreneur · educator · philanthropist
Brandee Sabella is an entrepreneur, educator, philanthropist, and leader in the personal development movement. She is the co-creator of Rythmia Life Advancement Center in Costa Rica and founder of The 9th Ray, where she works with entrepreneurs, artists, philanthropists, and leaders from around the world to help them align their work with purpose and create meaningful legacies.
Brandee developed the MANA curriculum from a belief that children thrive when learning is connected to creativity, service, emotional intelligence, entrepreneurship, and real-world experiences. She continues to collaborate with master educators, artists, scientists, entrepreneurs, Indigenous elders, and visionary leaders, integrating their life’s work into a living curriculum that evolves alongside the world and the children it serves.
Come experience MANA
Join us for a FREE MANA Makers Day and let your child experience MANA firsthand.
Meet our teachers. Meet the students. Meet the people who make MANA what it is.
Create, build, explore, and get a taste of our project-based learning approach.
Come experience MANA with your child—and see if it feels like the right fit for your family.
FREE MAKERS DAY
MANA · Ojai
Text Brandee: 415-341-6652Ready to apply? Application & admissions
