A precious moment

Friday morning at Tawa Montessori Preschool ...

- Anja

Photos copyright Tawa Montessori Preschool/Little Earth® Montessori

Our journey at Little Earth (1) - The start

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end”

- Ursula LeGuin

Words can not describe enough the buzz of excitement at Little Earth Montessori. We opened our new purpose build enviro pre-school last year. The one thing we did not “build” when we opened our new preschool, was our outdoor environment. We did not want to use plastic playhouses, toys, or static climbing structures made of steel and rubber safety surfaces. however, we did create a sand area, using driftwood logs, some river boulders and a truckload of sand. The rest of our outdoor environment was left as a big field of grass.

With that, we started our outdoor journey at Little Earth with the goal to create an outdoor prepared environment with a soul. We are now ten months into our journey and our field of grass is slowly, but surely, starting to convert into a place with trees, gardens, logs, rocks, animals, insects and birds, a place for exploration and discovery, a magical place for children. And it is creating a real buzz!

Our journey is a continuing story of trial and error, assessment and re-assessment, observations and discussions, evaluation and reflection, and lots of reading and learning. As a Montessori preschool we are committed to preparing our outdoor environment with the same passion as our indoor environment, an environment that is set up with plenty of purposeful activities that are meaningful and engage our children.

What does all this mean for Little Earth? First of all, it means we have had lots of thinking to do. We all agreed we wanted our outdoor environment to be as natural as possible and to be a child’s space, rather than an adult space, a place maintained by the children without any out of bounds corners or areas. We also liked the idea of permaculture, as this would complement the enviro character of our preschool and our quest for a more sustainable preschool community. Permaculture is a new concept for us. Whilst we have experience with naturalising our outdoor environment at Tawa Montessori Preschool, developing a complete blank slat from scratch into a permaculture garden proved to be a bit more challenging.

As we embarked on our journey we came across several questions:

• How is our curriculum meeting our children’s development and learning needs currently and how will it meet the need for a naturalised environment and a more sustainable preschool community?

• What are our current practices and how do they reflect our wish for a naturalised outdoor environment and a more sustainable preschool community? Are our practices developed so they can be embedded in our daily thinking and actions?

• What resources, knowledge and skills have we got available?

• What support systems do we have in place for our teachers?

• Does our philosophy, including our values and believes, need rethinking?

Answering these questions required lots of reading and studying, and months of research, workshops, hui, meetings, discussions, brainstorming and consultations. Along the road we have drawn a dream map, a mind map and a vision map. Our journey continues, but we are now at a point where we can see results outside.

Over the last few months we have implemented several outdoor projects. Our outdoor area is slowly, but surely, changing into a more natural garden that functions as an outdoor classroom. An environment created by and for the children. As stakeholders and active agents, the children are our driving force throughout our journey. Their ideas, feedback, wishes and needs are crucial to the success. At Little Earth they have a voice that is listened to and supported. Where ever the journey is taking us, we make sure their experiences are enjoyable, rich in learning and secure.  And let’s not forget to celebrate!

- Anja

Next post -  Our journey at Little Earth (2) - The process

The joy of olives

A few years ago we bought two olive plants from a nursery. We planted them at the back of our garden at Tawa Montessori and sort of forgot about them. The guinea pigs, which have a corner in our garden where they can roam free, scratch themselves now and then against their stems, other than that, the olives stand there, side by side. While the plants have grown olives in the past, the birds beat us to it and we have never really had any expectation of getting a crop out of them. But this year proves to be different.

By the end of summer, the plants, now starting to look more like little trees, were full of olives. As the weeks went past, the olives started to look very inviting and we were sure that by the time autumn arrives, the birds would have had their feast. To our big surprise the birds haven't been interested in the olives at all. We are not sure why that is?

The children find it amazing that those little white flowers, earlier in the year, turned into green pills that are now growing bigger and bigger. With the trees at the children’s height, the dangling olives have become very tempting to pick. I tried to read up to find out when the time is right to pick an olive, but I got rather confused about the variety in ripeness, and colour, not the least the fact that olives are sensitive and bruise easily, meaning that the timing of picking is crucial to the outcome of the olive. Since winter has arrived, including its frost and the famous Wellington icy cold southerly winds from Antarctica, we decided to pick the olives, ripe or not ripe.

Armed with basket and scissors, the latter proved to be unnecessary, we headed down the garden. The children had great delight in picking the olives and filling their basket. Not that we had that many olives, but the pleasure and satisfaction of picking a crop, no matter how big, is enough to reward the virtue of patience practiced by the children in the previous months.

Now we need to cure the olives, any suggestions?

- Anja