We love watching the birds

At our preschools we are trying our very best to make our environment friendly to all sorts of wildlife. When we build Little Earth the place was no more than a paddock full of grass. For the past three years we planted lots of native plants to attract wildlife, especially insects and birds. This year these plants have been blooming and more birds have come to visit us. Apart from the regular visits from the sparrows, this week we spotted waxeyes, tui, korimako/bellbird, starling, chaffinch, and goldfinch enjoying our plants at Little Earth. Even the Paradise ducks come and enjoy our place, too. They even bring their little babies. At Tawa Montessori Preschool we have been enjoying watching the birds for years. The tui and fantails are regular visitors to our garden, as are the blackbirds, the piopio/thrush and the yellowhammer.

We love watching the birds. We will sit very quietly at a short distance, as we know that if we come too close, or make too much noise, the birds will fly away. Sometimes we don’t notice the birds when we are too busy, but when we keep still and just observe them we discover a lot of things about the birds. We notice how their colours, sizes, sounds, and way of eating are different.

Sensorial experiences are of vital importance for the development of the child. Whilst the children love matching the birds with the pictures in the bird book, trying to find out what the names of the birds are, knowing the bird names is by far less important as sitting quietly and observing and listening to the birds. Connecting with the senses and marveling at nature is not rocket science. Our teachers do not have a degree in ornithology to go birdwatching with our children. The only thing you need to do is to “just notice”, to be aware, to be open to what is happening right here and then in front of you. The sparrow taking a bath in the puddle, the tui calling out in the kowhai tree, the waxeyes eating the little berries. Slow down and look at them, marvel at them with your child. It is the simple authentic experiences that feed their heart.

- Anja

Sunflowers, messenger of aesthetics and beauty

Time has come for our sunflowers to be taken out. The flowers have wilted: the leaves have died, the seeds have ripened, and the sunflowers are sadly dropping their head. We have thoroughly enjoyed our sunflowers, both at Tawa Montessori and at Little Earth.

Sunflowers are very fast growers, making it one of the best flowers to grow with children. They are also one of the tallest flowers, as they can easily grow up to 3.00 m. When we planted our seeds in the potting shed, we had seedlings within days and it looked as if we could “see the flower growing in front of our eyes”. Sunflowers will need support to stop them from blowing over or breaking, especially in windy weather. Our children have enjoyed taking care of the flowers and watering them dutifully, taking regularly note of its growing length. A milestone was reached once the plants grew taller than the teachers!

When the flower heads open, bees and other beneficial insects will visit for nectar and pollen. Heaps of bumble bees visited our flowers, sometimes as many as five at a time on one head. The nearby bug hilton may have played a role in this! We harvested some of the heads once they started to turn brown and into seed and hung them to dry underneath the roof of our deck. We left some flowers for the birds to feed and some to ripen in the sun.

Sunflowers are used for their oil and for their seeds, which are used in salads, breads and other foods. Sunflowers have called to peoples imaginations for centuries, most famously Vincent van Gogh, whose sunflower paintings are well known. The flowers at our preschools definitely add aesthetics and beauty to our garden, which is a most important aspect of our classroom environment, inside and outside.

Maria Montessori strongly believed that the child should live in an environment of beauty. Although aesthetics is subject to one's taste, and is strongly dependent on sense perception, hence the derivation from the Greek aisthetikos, aesthetics in the classroom are strongly encouraged and nurtured.

Nature provides many aspects of beauty and aesthetics, if not physical, it is emotional or spiritual, making it a perfect classroom. At our preschools we work very hard to keep our gardens, which function as an outdoor classroom, beautiful and aesthetically pleasing. Our sunflowers have been a big part of this.



It is with sadness we pull the dead flowers out, but we will collect the ripened seeds, using tweezers as part of our practical life activities,  and keep them for next season’s planting. This will teach us an important lesson about the cycle of life, close up!

- Anja

Birdwatching with young children

Daylight savings started today. Spring is here, downunder. This is the time of the year I wake up at around 5.30am to a chorus of birds, singing in our otherwise quiet suburb, only to be all silent again at around 6 am. Sometimes I get up and have a dip in our spa pool, watching with anticipation the sky above to see if is going to be a blue and sunny day or not, at the same time enjoying the crispy air and listening to the tui in the neighbour’s tree. Sometimes my six year old daughter joins me, and it is a time we thoroughly enjoy together. This brings me to birdwatching with children.

Today’s life is hectic for our children with school work, afterschool activities and peer pressure. At our preschool, we show the children how to take a deep breath, slow down, and wonder at the beauty of nature. One of the activities we use is introducing them to birdwatching. We have a small park next to our preschool with some bushes bordering to our garden. The birds like this little green dot in our suburb and we regularly have little wax-eyes , yellowhammers and tui visiting the trees. This often happens during our lunchtime, when we are having our lunch with the children up on our deck. The garden will be quiet which makes it a good time for the birds to visit and take advantage of the spilled bird seeds or chicken pellets our pets have left behind.

The blackbirds especially love to have a little splash in our little pond, which we created out of a children’s play water trough.The children and I will try to quietly move a bit closer and watch the birds as they enjoy their splash, their feed or their bath in the sand and dust.

The driftwood logs in our garden provide a great spot for the children to quietly sit and watch.

Birdwatching is a great nature activity to do with young children. You can hang a bird feeder just outside the window and show the child how to sit quietly so that the birds won’t be afraid or you can take them outside into your backyard, your local park or to the forest. Young children are very capable of sitting quietly and watching. You don’t need much, except for a birdguide and a pair of binoculars. We use Andrew Crowe’s: A Mini Guide to the Identification of New Zealand's Land Birds, which is excellent for the younger ones as it small with not to many pages and basic with clear pictures. The birdwatching.com website has a good introduction to birdwatching with children. I also came across this article Birdwatching helps children become nature-wise by Karen Stephens.

There is something magic about watching a bird in its natural environment, going about its business. What is magic too, is watching your child making that connection with nature when they sit quietly, and are mesmerized by the awe and wonder that has been awakened.

Watch birds with your children. You'll be giving them a lifetime ticket to the theater of nature. - birdwatching.com