Twelve sessions. Twelve missions. One canvas a child fills with their own hands.
Every month for a year, a child receives one spark, one mission, and one honest mirror — and fills a canvas with twelve things they made themselves.
Invert the classroom
One live session a month is the spark — about 10% of the program. The other 90% is the child working on a real mission, at their own pace, inside their own constraints, with coaching available but hands off. A child who works alone for four weeks and returns with something they made has practiced self-reliance. A child who watched twelve lectures has practiced watching.
The Loop
The unit of the Canvas Year is not the session — it is the loop. Twelve loops, each one month long, each identical in shape and different in content.
- 1Spark
The monthly live session — ignition, not instruction.
- 2Stroke
Four weeks of independent work, planned by the child on their own Stroke Card.
- 3Proof
The submission: the artifact, and the honest story of how it was made.
- 4Mirror
Structured feedback — Keep, Change, Try. Never a verdict, never a score read aloud.
…and the loop begins again. Twelve times, one month each.
Twelve loops, four seasons
The year has a deliberate arc. Each season shifts the center of gravity further from us and closer to the child.
See it
Orientation and honest imitation, ending in a first original.
Make it
Craft: revision, making for real people, delivering inside constraints.
Show it
The work meets the world: portfolio, outside review, pricing.
Own it
Real briefs, teaching others, and Canvas Day.
Learn the tool by honest imitation — recreate a well-made artifact as closely as you can. Copywork, declared as copywork.
The first real brief: make something for a real person in your home — the cook, the warden, a younger child. They must actually use it.
Learn what work is worth: research real market rates and write a one-page quote for your own work — scope, time, price, why.
A real task from the CanvasCode network, with a real deadline and a real user.
Three tools, one line never crossed
A coach has exactly three tools: a question, an example, and a resource. That is the whole toolbox.
An adult’s hands never produce any part of the child’s artifact.
Not “just this bit,” not “let me quickly show you on yours.” Struggle, in this order — question, example, resource — is not unkindness. It is the curriculum. Help is legitimate and declared: every submission asks “what help did I take?” Taking help is a skill; hiding it is the only failure.
We issue no certificates. The canvas — twelve artifacts and the story of how each was made — proves what a child can do, and it is their first portfolio.
We also measure what the adults could remove: every mission logs how much adult help it needed. That number must fall across the year while the work gets better — self-reliance, measured.
The Canvas Year is how the Learn stage of the Journey works — and the canvas a child carries out of it is what the Earn stage begins with.
The whole Journey →