True Life School 🛠️
Making & problem-solving
From an idea to a finished thing — build, design, fix.
Example activities
Example activities — what a child actually does here.
After a short, focused academic block, the day opens up. We teach a set of durable competencies directly — and every project ends in something real: a show, a sale, a launch, a live test.
The goal for year one
Your child can give first aid (with a certificate), has cooked five real dinners, has sold their first product and has performed in front of a live audience.
What stays for life
Six competencies behind every activity.
The topics change; the competencies compound. Each activity below builds one or more of these — on purpose, not by accident.
💰
Entrepreneurship & money
Turn an idea into an offer; understand money and risk.
🎤
Communication & speaking
Speak clearly, defend a view, perform in front of people.
🤝
Teamwork & leadership
Work in a team, take responsibility, lead others.
🧗
Grit & character
Don't give up; handle failure and emotions.
🌍
Responsibility & the world
Understand the world, care for surroundings, act as a citizen.
Not “we’ll talk about it.” You have to do it for real.
Taught directly
Competencies are taught like any subject — step by step, not left to chance.
Real stakes
Every project ends in something real: a show, a sale, a publication, a launch.
Measurable mastery
What counts is the result, live — not attendance. Passed when it actually works.
The highlights
Eight projects your child will talk about for years.
A go-kart built to race
A team builds a working pedal go-kart from real plans — then lines up on race day.
🏁 Race day on the track
A jar of their own honey
They run a school beehive with a beekeeper for a full season. The finale: harvesting honey into a jar with their own label.
🍯 A honey jar with their own label
A drone flown through the course
They assemble a kit drone, calibrate it and fly it through an obstacle course. From screws to flight.
🛸 A clean obstacle-course flight
A film in 48 hours
Crews write, shoot and edit a 3–5 minute film in one weekend. The finale: a premiere on the big screen, audience and applause included.
🎬 A premiere before an audience
A first company before thirteen
They launch a mini-company, sell at the fair and settle a real profit or loss. At dinner you'll hear: 'I sold out and made 47 zloty.'
💶 A first profit, accounted for
100,000 zł on the market (simulated)
They manage a 100,000 zł portfolio on real market data and write an investment report. Here, losses teach for free.
📈 An investment report on real data
UN-style negotiations — in English
They represent a country at a Model UN and negotiate resolutions in English, under real procedures.
🌐 A resolution negotiated in English
Able to save a life — certified
A certified ERC first-aid course with a working paramedic. The certificate is valid for 3 years across Europe.
📜 An ERC certificate, valid 3 years
The catalog · 100 examples
A hundred real projects. Filter by area.
Building & making SP
A birdhouse someone moves into
They design and build a cedar birdhouse, mount it in the park and wait. In spring, a photo of the first tenant comes home.
🐦 A photo of the first tenant
Building & making LO
A go-kart built to race
A team builds a working pedal go-kart from real plans — then lines up on race day.
🏁 Race day on the track
Building & making SP
A bug hotel with real guests
They build a bug hotel and a bird feeder, then keep a guest log for a month. Who checks in first?
🐝 A month-long guest log
Building & making SP
A kite that truly flies
They design, build and fly a kite, tuning it after every crash — until it really holds the wind.
🪁 Their own kite in the sky
Building & making SP
A marble run with a working loop
They engineer a cardboard run with loops and drops, test and fix — until the marble makes it end to end.
🎢 A clean end-to-end run
Building & making SP
First thing in wood: a toolbox
They measure, cut, join and finish a real wooden toolbox. It comes home and stays for years.
🧰 A toolbox made by hand, built to last
Building & making LO
Furniture the whole school sits on
They upcycle pallets into a bench or desk that lives on campus. Someone uses it every day.
🪑 Furniture in daily use
Building & making LO
A stool with zero screws
They build a stool on true mortise-and-tenon joints, the way joiners did for centuries. The test: it must hold an adult.
🪵 Passes the adult-sits-on-it test
Building & making SP
A platform that holds the whole crew
They calculate loads, plan the build and raise a sturdy platform as a team. The final test: everyone stands on it at once.
🌳 The whole crew up top at once
Building & making LO
Will this raft hold three people?
They design and build a raft, then float-test it loaded. Physics stops being theory when you can get wet.
🛟 A real-water float test
Building & making SP
The rack the whole school uses
They build and install a real bike rack at school. They pass it every day — knowing it stands because of them.
🚲 A build in daily use
Building & making LO
An outdoor table built to last
They build a weatherproof outdoor table-tennis table. Opening day: a tournament on their own table.
🏓 An opening tournament on their table
Building & making LO
A turbine that lights a bulb
They build a small wind turbine, measure its output and tune the blades until the LED shines brighter.
💡 Electricity they generated themselves
Building & making LO
A real structure at full scale
They frame a small garden structure: measuring, levelling, joining. The first thing they build that is bigger than they are.
🏗️ A build bigger than they are
Nature, garden & food SP
Dinner from their own garden
They run a garden from seed to harvest, then cook a meal from their own vegetables — and invite the parents.
🍽️ A parents' dinner from their own harvest
Nature, garden & food SP
A real crop from their own bed
They grow vegetables from seed in raised beds and harvest a real crop. A radish tastes different when you grew it yourself.
🥕 A box of their own vegetables
Nature, garden & food LO
A jar of their own honey
They run a school beehive with a beekeeper for a full season. The finale: harvesting honey into a jar with their own label.
🍯 A honey jar with their own label
Nature, garden & food SP
A soil factory from lunch scraps
They build a compost and worm bin, feed it lunch scraps and watch waste turn into soil for the next beds.
🪱 Waste turned into soil
Nature, garden & food LO
Aquaponics: fish feed the lettuce
They build a closed loop: fish feed the plants, plants clean the water. If the lettuce grows, the system works.
🐟 A working closed ecosystem
Nature, garden & food LO
Bread and cheese from scratch
They raise a sourdough starter, bake bread and make fresh cheese. A loaf comes home — and a skill for life.
🍞 Their own loaf on the family table
Nature, garden & food SP
A herbarium like a botanist's
They collect, press and label plants into a real herbarium; the dried herbs go to the school kitchen.
🌿 Their herbarium + herbs for the kitchen
Nature, garden & food LO
50 trees that outlast us
They plan and plant 50 trees or a wildflower meadow and tend it for a year. In a decade they can point: we planted these.
🌳 Trees they can visit for decades
Nature, garden & food SP
A digital tree map of the neighborhood
They identify species and map local trees onto a shared online map the whole neighborhood can use.
🗺️ A public nature map
Robotics, electronics & code SP
A robot that dodges walls by itself
They build a driving robot from a motor and a battery, then teach it to dodge obstacles — watching their code move something real for the first time.
🤖 Their code drives a real robot
Robotics, electronics & code LO
Their own Arduino weather station
They wire and code a station that logs temperature and humidity for a week — then read their own data like meteorologists.
🌡️ A week of their own weather data
Robotics, electronics & code SP
A step counter the class wears
They code a micro:bit step counter and wear it in a class challenge: who walks the most this week?
⌚ A challenge on their own gadget
Robotics, electronics & code LO
A part you can't buy
They model a missing part in CAD — a bracket, a hook, a cap — and 3D-print it until it truly fits.
🖨️ A designed, printed, working part
Robotics, electronics & code SP
An alarm that guards their room
They build a simple circuit that buzzes when the door opens. Warning the siblings is their own call.
🚨 A working alarm on their own door
Robotics, electronics & code LO
A robot for the sumo ring
They build and program a robot, then enter it in a tournament: line-following or sumo. The better code wins.
🥋 An entry in a real robot tournament
Robotics, electronics & code SP
A flashlight they soldered themselves
They learn to solder and build a working LED flashlight. It's theirs to keep — ready for every blackout.
🔦 Their own blackout-ready flashlight
Robotics, electronics & code LO
A planter that waters itself
They build a planter with a moisture sensor and a pump. If the plant survives the holidays, the system works.
🪴 A plant that survives the holidays
Robotics, electronics & code LO
A drone flown through the course
They assemble a kit drone, calibrate it and fly it through an obstacle course. From screws to flight.
🛸 A clean obstacle-course flight
Learning by doing LO
Air reports that reach town hall
They measure local air and water quality for a year; quarterly reports go to town hall. Science the adult world actually reads.
🏛️ A report read by the town hall
Learning by doing SP
A bridge that survives the load test
Teams design and build a stick bridge, then add weight until one breaks — and write up what held and why.
🌉 A public load test
Learning by doing SP
A rocket — and how high, exactly?
They build a water rocket, launch it and measure the height. Then they tune it and beat their own record.
🚀 Their own altitude record
Learning by doing SP
Spaghetti tower vs gravity
They engineer the tallest spaghetti tower to survive a load test. Simple rules, merciless physics.
🍝 Measured: the tallest tower standing
Learning by doing SP
Crystals grown in a jar
They grow real crystals from a solution and explain why they form. Chemistry you can put on a shelf.
💎 Their own crystal for the shelf
Learning by doing LO
Their own study, hypothesis to chart
They pose a hypothesis, design the experiment, collect the data and present it in clear charts. Small scale, real science.
📊 A presentation of their own results
Learning by doing SP
A photo from a camera with no electronics
They build a pinhole camera from a tin and capture a real photograph. Photography reduced to the pure physics of light.
📷 A print from their own camera
Learning by doing LO
The world the naked eye misses
They prepare their own slides and explore them under the microscope — a drop of pond water can out-plot a movie.
🔬 Their own slides and a discovery log
Learning by doing LO
A snack baked by the sun alone
They build a solar oven and cook a snack with sunlight alone. Renewable energy you can eat.
☀️ Food cooked on sunshine
Creativity & arts SP
A film in 48 hours
Crews write, shoot and edit a 3–5 minute film in one weekend. The finale: a premiere on the big screen, audience and applause included.
🎬 A premiere before an audience
Creativity & arts LO
A game strangers will play
They design and publish their own game — digital (Godot/Unity) or board — with full design docs. Then they watch someone outside school play it.
🎮 A published, playable game
Creativity & arts LO
A design for a real city
They redesign a real public space nearby and present it to the institution that could change it.
🏙️ A pitch to a real institution
Creativity & arts SP
A comic book in print
They write, draw and print their own comic book. Tiny print run, enormous pride.
📚 A printed copy with their name on it
Creativity & arts LO
A released EP or podcast season
They write, record and release a short EP or a podcast season — on a real platform, under their own title.
🎧 A release on a real platform
Creativity & arts SP
A mural that stays on the wall
They design and paint a large mural on a school wall. It will greet students long after they move on.
🎨 A wall signed with their design
Creativity & arts LO
Stop-motion: 24 frames of patience
They build sets and animate a short frame by frame. One second of film is a dozen photos — you can see the patience on screen.
🎞️ A screening of the finished film
Creativity & arts SP
A shadow show for the little ones
They build puppets, write the script and stage a shadow-theatre show for younger kids. Real audience, real stage fright, real applause.
🎭 A show before a real audience
Creativity & arts LO
A garment shown on a runway
They design and sew a wearable garment — then show it on the school runway.
👗 A runway walk in their own design
Technology & media LO
First code on GitHub
They learn Python by building a real project and publish it on GitHub — where professionals keep theirs.
💻 A public code portfolio
Technology & media SP
Train your own assistant
They train an image-recognition model in Teachable Machine and probe when it fails — learning what bias really means.
🧠 A working model — and a sense of when not to trust the tool
Technology & media LO
An investigation that busts a fake
They verify viral claims with OSINT methods — geolocation, metadata — and publish their own fact-check.
🕵️ A published fact-check
Technology & media SP
Their own address on the internet
They build and publish their first website — about themselves, a passion, a team. Grandma gets the link.
🌐 A live site at their own link
Technology & media LO
An app that solves someone's problem
They find a real problem — at home, at school, in a club — and ship a no-code app that solves it. The metric: someone uses it.
📱 An app with a real user
Technology & media SP
A game the whole class plays
They design and publish a playable Scratch game — then watch the class try to beat their level.
🕹️ A game others actually play
Technology & media LO
An episode on a real channel
They script, film, edit and publish an episode to a channel — learning to talk to camera and read the stats.
📹 A published episode with real stats
Technology & media LO
A digital assistant trained for a job
They design and prompt a custom digital assistant for one real, repeatable task — then hand it to someone who uses it.
🤝 An assistant a real person uses
Home & daily life SP
5 dinners cooked for you
They learn to cook five real dinners from scratch. The finale: a family meal where you don't lift a finger.
🍽️ A family dinner cooked entirely by your child
Home & daily life LO
A month on the household budget
They run a weekly budget and shopping list for a month — seeing for the first time what life really costs.
💸 A month of expenses, accounted for
Home & daily life SP
A bike fixed with their own hands
They patch a tube, set the brakes and tune a bike until it rides like new. From now on, a flat is not a crisis.
🚲 A full service done solo
Home & daily life LO
Shelf, tap and plug — fixed
They hang a shelf, fix a dripping tap and change a plug — safely and for real. Handiness starts here.
🔧 Three home repairs, passed
Home & daily life SP
Handle it yourself: laundry, button, order
They sort and run laundry, sew a button back on, keep their own things in order. Boring? Maybe. Independence? Priceless.
🧺 A week of self-sufficiency, passed
Home & daily life LO
A real CV and a serious interview
They write a real CV and face a mock interview with an adult they don't know. Stress now, calm in a few years.
📄 A CV ready for a first job
Home & daily life SP
A weekly plan that actually sticks
They plan a week, build a morning routine and review after seven days what held. The habit, not the app, makes the difference.
📅 A 7-day review of what held
Home & daily life LO
A contract read before signing
They read a real contract and a bill and spot the traps. Their first job or rental contract won't surprise them.
🔍 Traps found in a real contract
Entrepreneurship & money LO
Startup Lab: an MVP and a Demo Day pitch
Teams build a working MVP and pitch it in English to an outside panel on Demo Day. Just like a real accelerator.
🚀 An English pitch to an outside panel
Entrepreneurship & money SP
A first company before thirteen
They launch a mini-company, sell at the fair and settle a real profit or loss. At dinner you'll hear: 'I sold out and made 47 zloty.'
💶 A first profit, accounted for
Entrepreneurship & money LO
100,000 zł on the market (simulated)
They manage a 100,000 zł portfolio on real market data and write an investment report. Here, losses teach for free.
📈 An investment report on real data
Entrepreneurship & money SP
A product invented, priced, sold
They design a product, set the price and sell at the fair with a profit goal. Customers don't buy out of pity — that's the lesson.
🏷️ A first product sold to strangers
Entrepreneurship & money LO
A campaign that hits its goal
They run a crowdfunding campaign for a real project: budget, promotion, backer rewards — until the counter hits the goal.
🎯 A public campaign funded
Entrepreneurship & money SP
Save up to the goal
They set a goal, make a simple money plan and actually follow it. The first pride of saving over spending.
🐷 A savings goal reached
Entrepreneurship & money LO
An online shop with a first order
They open a real online shop — product, photos, shipping — and fight for a first order from a stranger.
📦 A first order from a stranger
Entrepreneurship & money LO
Negotiate a better deal
They learn to negotiate and close a deal in a realistic simulation — with a tough counterpart across the table.
🤝 A deal closed under pressure
Communication & speaking LO
A talk like a TED talk
Each student writes and records a professional 12-minute TED-style talk — ready for a university portfolio.
🎤 A recording for the university portfolio
Communication & speaking LO
UN-style negotiations — in English
They represent a country at a Model UN and negotiate resolutions in English, under real procedures.
🌐 A resolution negotiated in English
Communication & speaking SP
A radio show, zero to published
They produce a 10-minute show — script, recording, edit — and publish it on the school podcast for parents and friends to hear.
📻 An episode on the school podcast
Communication & speaking SP
Defend the motion. Then tear it down.
In a formal Oxford debate they defend a motion — then sides flip. They learn to understand before they judge.
⚖️ Arguing both sides, live
Communication & speaking LO
5 minutes of stand-up on stage
They write and perform a 5-minute storytelling set before an audience. The laughs and the silences both teach.
🎙️ A set before a full room
Communication & speaking SP
An interview with a real expert
They book, prepare and record an interview with a real expert — then publish it. The first phone call is the hardest part.
🎧 A published interview
Communication & speaking LO
3 minutes before an 'investor'
They deliver a 3-minute pitch and field tough questions. Brevity under pressure is a lifelong superpower.
⏱️ A pitch plus a hard Q&A
Communication & speaking SP
Stage, mic, real audience
They perform a live reading or recitation before an audience. The stage fright passes; the confidence stays.
🌟 A first solo performance
Body, movement & wellbeing LO
Able to save a life — certified
A certified ERC first-aid course with a working paramedic. The certificate is valid for 3 years across Europe.
📜 An ERC certificate, valid 3 years
Body, movement & wellbeing SP
Wall climbed, course conquered
They train on a climbing wall and complete a real obstacle course. Fear turns into technique.
🧗 The full course, completed
Body, movement & wellbeing LO
6 weeks on their own training plan
They design a six-week training plan, follow it and track progress — seeing in numbers that they're stronger than at the start.
💪 Progress in black and white
Body, movement & wellbeing SP
Calm on demand
They learn yoga and breathing routines that work before a test, a show or a hard conversation. A tool for life.
🧘 A stress tool that stays
Body, movement & wellbeing LO
Self-defense: confidence when it counts
They complete a practical self-defense course — from escapes to an assertive 'no'. May they never need it.
🥊 A completed instructor-led course
Body, movement & wellbeing SP
An expedition, map to campfire
They plan the route, pack the gear and complete a bike trip or an overnight camp. The weather won't always cooperate — that's the point.
⛺ A night out they planned themselves
Relationships & character LO
Leading for real: a team and a budget
A student leader runs a community project end to end: team, budget, deadlines, outcome and final report. Real responsibility, no training wheels.
👑 A delivered project and final report
Relationships & character SP
A mediator for real conflicts
Trained student mediators run shifts and resolve school conflicts themselves. An adult only watches from the side.
🕊️ Mediations they ran themselves
Relationships & character SP
Volunteering the shelter can feel
They volunteer at an animal shelter for a term and close by reporting what their work actually changed.
🐕 A real-impact report
Relationships & character LO
Mentor to a younger student
They mentor a younger student toward a concrete goal for a term. Nothing teaches like teaching.
🎓 A mentee's goal, reached
Relationships & character SP
A journal that teaches self-understanding
They keep an emotions-and-gratitude journal and, after a month, name what changed. A quieter superpower than a go-kart — but a superpower.
📔 A month of self-knowledge, with conclusions
Relationships & character LO
#change: fix something for real
They run an initiative that genuinely improves something at school — from idea, through persuasion, to rollout.
✅ A change actually shipped at school
World, culture & citizenship SP
A Memory Archive: 20 recorded witnesses
They record interviews with eyewitnesses and build a digital Memory Archive — 20+ conversations that would otherwise be lost.
🎞️ A digital archive for future generations
World, culture & citizenship LO
A campaign city hall can hear
They run a real advocacy campaign: gather signatures, file a petition and meet local councillors.
🏛️ A petition formally filed
World, culture & citizenship SP
A term of letters across borders
They exchange letters and videos with a school abroad for a term. English stops being a subject and becomes a connection.
✉️ A real pen-pal abroad
World, culture & citizenship LO
An election, campaign to count
They organize a real student election: campaigns, debates, a committee and the count. Democracy from the inside.
🗳️ A real election, delivered
World, culture & citizenship SP
Cook a country you've never met
They cook a dish from another country and present its culture — at a shared world-cuisine feast.
🌍 A world-cuisine feast
World, culture & citizenship LO
Lead a tour of your own town
They research local history and lead a real guided walk — for parents, neighbours and the curious.
🚶 A tour led for a live audience
A sample of the program we are building. SP = primary, LO = high school.