Land School
In 1996, Lake Country School (LCS) purchased 160 acres of land in Dunn County, Wisconsin. The beautiful site includes a farmstead, forests, fields, ravines, and ponds. We have developed an extensive trail system, thriving beehives, maple sugaring, and an apple orchard. In 2004, the Lodge was built which serves as classroom, kitchen, dining hall, living space, and dorm rooms.
The Land School augments the Montessori classroom experiences of our students, serves as an ideal environment for summer programs, and is a valuable resource for the LCS community in developing a deep relationship with the land over an extended period of time. This relationship is cultivated through Elementary classroom visits and culminates with an Erdkinder experience for adolescents, an integral part of a full Montessori Junior High education.
There are many ways to engage with the Land School! Find out more here.
The Lake Country Land School follows these values and principles:
- We value the work of the hand and the land and create experiences that help children explore and discover these connections.
- We are organic farmers and stewards of the land.
- We seek a sustainable, harmonious balance between domesticated and wild areas in nature.
- We value simplicity, order, beauty, and the practice of restoring and recycling before building anew.
- We recognize and articulate the inherent sacredness of the earth and the child's opportunity to experience it.
- We seek to realize meaningful relationships between urban and rural life.
Visit the Lake Country Land School blog to read stories about our rural campus.
We acknowledge this land as ancestral and traditional Dakota and Anishinaabe, and Ho-Chunk land, ceded by the Anishinaabe in 1837 as a result of U.S. government pressure. As we continue to learn about the land, the history, the present, and the act of publicly acknowledging the land, we commit ourselves to a process of ongoing relationship building and learning, and we strive to develop programs, policies, and actions to combat indigenous erasure and honor treaties moving forward, in the ways we can as a school. We welcome you to join us on this journey and look forward to continuing the conversation.
In the fall of 2020, the LCS Junior High students and staff were immersed in a week-long experience at the Land School, a starting point on a journey to learn more about the history of this land and all the people who have called it home. The Land School Timeweb is the culmination of student research – a web instead of a line, to recognize that we are in constant relationship with other people and living beings, past and present, and the events of the past continue to affect the land, communities, and each of us today.
