I am sure we are all attached to our own methods of schooling, but I do not think roaming freely does much to help children.
I do like the idea of teaching sounds before names.
What I think might be a good idea from personal observation is teaching a phonetic language before English. Why?
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Spelling in Italian or Bulgarian, for example, is a piece of cake. It’s all phonetic! This leads to faster times in learning how to read and write, and hence access to much more material at an earlier age
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Learning English after another language is not really that difficult. Once you get past the spelling (which is much simplified after you already know how to read any language at all), English is a piece of cake
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Learning Italian as a first language would be extremely beneficial, as some commonplace words in Italian are more complex words in English. For example, the English “amorous” and the Italian “amoroso.” The Italian word is literally translated as the English “loving”. To learn to speak everyday Italian, you must know this word. However, the cognate in English is an advanced word. But since you already know it in Italian, you have a gigantic advantage.