Green Gables Play School

Problem

Green Gables is a Waldorf-inspired play school in Golden, Colorado, run by Rachel Cooper, a nationally certified Waldorf teacher, serving families since 2015, with a small working farm of named animals. The old Squarespace site poured genuinely enchanting copy about fairy nooks and roaming caterpillars into a generic template with phone-snapshot photography. The words and the place were magical. The design was not.

Approach

The direction we chose is called Seasonal Rhythm. Waldorf education is built on the rhythm of days, weeks and the year, so the site embodies that by being seasonal: the palette, the photography and the framing shift with the calendar. The website teaches the philosophy by living it.

Build

Next.js on Vercel, built so Rachel can update content without a developer. Her photo intake became a documented pipeline: each shot reviewed, resized to a set long side, device data stripped, colour kept. Thirty of her own photographs went in on the second round, from puddle day in spring to the candlelit spiral walk in winter.

Result

Live at greengablesplayschool.com since July 2026, with the teacher running it.

Taught

The pipeline for her photos is written down, step by step, so the next season's pictures go in the same way the last ones did.