Deidre - this is wonderful and thanks so much for sharing the photo of your lovely grand-daughter.
We are on exactly 'the same page' about this and very early on in our research considered a Montessori classroom as a prime example of where emergent learning might happen. We have written about this on our open wiki - http://footprints-of-emergence.wikispaces.com/Montessori+pre-school
Why do you think school beats this out of children - and in what forms do you think it is fundamentally there? How do adults draw on these early experiences? Or what do we do in our education systems that inhibits emergent learning?
Thank you Deirdre :-)