About
A small school with one person’s name behind it
Daisy Chains has been teaching in Ao Nang for 13 years. It is not a franchise and it is not a chain — it is one Montessori school, run by the person who founded it.
Our story
How the school came about
Joy Stapleton is Irish, trained in education and in Montessori, and has family in Thailand. Daisy Chains started because Ao Nang had plenty of childcare and very little early years education — and because the families arriving here from elsewhere had nowhere to send children who did not speak Thai yet.
What began as a small playgroup became three mixed-age classrooms, a walled garden, and a community of Thai and international families whose children learn alongside each other every day.
It has stayed deliberately small. Someone who knows your child greets them at the gate in the morning and is there again at collection, which is the part parents end up telling each other about.
What we believe
Four things we would not change
The child does the learning
An adult can prepare a room, offer a material and then get out of the way. What happens next belongs to the child. Our job is to notice when to step in and, more often, when not to.
Small is a feature
Every teacher here knows every child by name, and knows which ones are having a hard week. That is only possible at this size, which is why we have not grown out of it.
Two languages, no fuss
English is the language of the classroom and Thai is taught alongside it every day. Children move between them far more easily than adults expect.
Parents are part of it
We would rather you asked a question than worried about it. We are reachable, in person and on WhatsApp, and that is not going to change.
Why Ao Nang
A good place to be four years old
Ao Nang sits between limestone cliffs and the Andaman Sea, which means children here grow up outdoors in a way that is getting rarer elsewhere. The school has a large walled garden, shade through the middle of the day, and the use of a swimming pool.
It is also a genuinely international town. Our families come from Thailand, the UK, Ireland, Europe, Australia and beyond, and the mix in the classroom is one of the reasons children settle here so quickly.
The person in charge
Joy Stapleton
Director & Montessori Teacher
B.Sc in Education & Training · Diploma in Montessori Education
Joy is Irish, has family in Thailand, and has been running Daisy Chains in Ao Nang since it opened. She built the school around the idea that a small setting, where the adults know every child by name, is worth more than any policy document.