Our first bounty!

Thank you for our happy hearts, rain and sunny weather.  Thank you for our food and that we are together.

 - Karakia Tawa Montessori Preschool and Little Earth Montessori

There is plenty of information available about the importance of school gardens.  Gardening with children helps them to connect with nature, it teaches them about nutrition, it introduces children to sustainable practices and children learn about the life cycle and science.  For us at Tawa Montessori Preschool and at Little Earth, the gardens play another very important role.  The gardens at our preschools give us reasons for celebration and nurture a sense of community.

Our recent gardening working bee at Tawa Montessori Preschool saw teachers, parents, friends, grandparents and the children spending two hours together, weeding, pruning, raking, sweeping and playing, followed with some well deserved food.  We had a great time in the garden, on a beautiful Friday afternoon.  Times like this happen less and less as we are busy with work and family commitments.  We forget how important these times are for the well-being of all of us as an individual, and as a family.  Spending time together and working for a common good fosters a sense of belonging, contributes to friendships and rekindles our relationships as teachers, parents, friends and children.  A garden is a beautiful setting for moments like these!

The gardens at our preschools also give us many opportunities for celebrations as we celebrate the seasons, as well as the many wonders and miracles we encounter in our gardens throughout the year.

Gardening is a part of our daily activities. We sow seeds and watch them grow, we attend to their needs and take care of the plants. This year Papatuanuku has been very generous  and provided us with plenty of vegetables and fruits at Little Earth. To share our bounty with our whanau we organised a summer Harvest Festival with a picnic lunch. The children  called it a “Veggie Party.”

The Harvest Festival served as a celebration of all of our work in the garden and the food grown on the land. It was a spontaneous, impromptu celebration, requiring only a low key organisation one week ahead. We prepared a menu from our harvest and the children all helped with the preparation. Each played a role to make our “veggie party” a success from harvesting, pasta-making, tomato sauce making, pesto making, bread making, juicing, and baking, to setting the table.

We had a big turn-out of families who brought along their savoury dishes whipped up from their garden’s produce, too. After blessing our food with our Karakia, we all sat down in our garden and shared the food. The family contributions and community spirit were overwhelming and we are still buzzing with excitement.

Thanks you to all who came, to our working bee at Tawa Montessori Preschool, and to our Harvest Festival at Little Earth Montessori: A garden truly grows more than just plants, it grows people!

- Anja

A Culture of Care and Respect

At both our preschools, our environment is one of beauty and harmony, with a curriculum centered on caring. We want our time spent together as a community to be a truly social experience. We play together, we work together.  We learn to make our own voice heard, as well as listen carefully for the voices of others.  We aim to not only respect each other, but show respect in all our interactions.

“We are all connected in the circle of life”

These words, inspired by my beautiful friend Marghanita from Outside with Marghanita, are on our gate and at our entrance.  We live these words in our daily practices. We care for our chickens who then care for us by providing us with eggs.  We use these eggs for making lemon honey, but then crush up the egg shells and feed them back to the chickens for extra nutrients. We plant seeds, water and care for them, nourished with coffee grounds from the local coffee shop.  We  later harvest the vegetables and use them in our food preparation.  Any scraps are given to our animals or put in the compost which will feed our soil. And the circle continues.

The children at our preschools engage their heads, hands and hearts in the garden and beyond.  They are fully involved in the physical work of collecting, transporting, setting up and maintaining the environments.  They show care in making sure the animals are taken care of, the creatures that live in our garden have a safe habitat, and the plants are well looked after.

Caring and creating a culture of respect, nurturing the heart and the emotional well being of each child is at the core of what we do.  We know that to be open to learning and confident to experiment, our ‘emotional fuel tank’ needs to be full. We also know that young children have a strong desire to be independent.  They want to be able to make their own choices, participate in their own daily care, and complete their own tasks.  Children do not want us to serve them, they want us to show them how they can do something for themselves. They need to make their own discoveries in learning.  Deep satisfaction does not come from watching someone else complete a job for you!  Satisfaction comes from repeated attempts, personal growth and eventual mastery.

Childhood is a journey that shapes the child for the rest of their life. In order to keepsake childhood, and to create a culture of care and respect, we need to create a warm haven for our children where they can feel safe and secure, where they can be independent and where they are given time to develop according to nature’s plan. In today’s hurried world, at Tawa Montessori Preschool and at Little Earth, we aim to provide the antidote to the stress and fast pace of our modern lifestyle, through reconnecting our children with nature. Animals, a garden, and a living landscape to explore are key elements of our preschool programme. Awakening the children’s awe and wonder for nature and its miracles are part of their daily experiences. Outdoors is where we ought to be!

- Anja