With Sydney sunshine making a grand and very welcome appearance for the start of spring, we are excited to get our students back into the FMS gardens for more learning and growing in our bountiful outdoor spaces.
One of the many beautiful and empowering aspects of Montessori education is how it helps children understand themselves as valued members of their communities through Care of the Environment. Practical Life work provides our students opportunities to tend to the spaces they live and learn in each day.
By participating in Care of Environment, children begin to feel at home in their classroom, school, and community. They feel a sense of ownership and take pride in their surroundings. In the process, they develop a deep sense of responsibility and connection.
At FMS, we are fortunate to have a sprawling nature-filled campus for students to explore to care for and learn from. Our school is alive with native plants and wildlife, edible gardens and a host of school pets to look after.
The beauty and benefits of learning outdoors
At Forestville Montessori School, the outdoor environment is not an afterthought. We consider the outdoors to be a natural and essential extension of the prepared indoor space.
For toddlers and preschool children who are absorbing everything from the world around them, time spent outdoors supports development in profound and lasting ways. For our primary school students, outdoor spaces can be a place for self-regulation and deep focus.
Now more than ever, when children tend to spend increasing amounts of time indoors, reconnecting with natural spaces is vital for physical, emotional, and cognitive health.
Research, including the work of Richard Louv in The Last Child in the Woods, highlights a growing body of evidence that time spent in nature is critical to the healthy development of both children and adults.
In Montessori, we recognise that outdoor time is not a break from learning. Rather, the natural world is a powerful space for movement, language, social development, and sensory integration. Time outdoors is learning time.
Preschool children are in the midst of sensitive periods for order, language, movement, and sensory refinement. These windows of opportunity allow for an intense connection with nature that nourishes the whole child. Plus, the natural world’s beauty, order, and rhythm speak to our deepest human tendencies: to explore, understand, and belong.
Developing social dynamics outdoors
Outdoor spaces become a rich environment for observation, guidance, and connection. Children are often more socially expressive outdoors, making this a critical time for observing group dynamics and supporting social-emotional growth.
It’s a time to model and share joyful, playful behavior. Children need to see that being human includes lightness and laughter. Outdoor time offers opportunities for playful learning.
We can also help children understand that different environments call for different behaviors. What is appropriate outdoors differs from what is expected indoors. As children gain different experiences, they come to understand how to conduct themselves with grace and courtesy on a woodland trail and a garden bed, or how to navigate the intricacies of fort building and group game dynamics. Montessori children learn to move through different scenes and scenarios with increasing awareness, sensitivity, and confidence.
Creating an outdoor classroom
Our outdoor spaces are an extension of our classrooms, not a break from them. As such, we are intentional about how our outdoor spaces are developmentally appropriate, deepen children’s understanding of cause and effect, nurture a sense of order and relate to our academic curriculum too.
We want activities in the outdoor space to have a purposeful intent so they support the integration of children’s will, intellect, and coordinated movement.
At FMS, some of our outdoor learning includes:
- Gardening activities – weeding, mulching, composting, planting
- Cleaning – collecting leaves, clearing paths, sweeping
- Horticulture – growing veggie gardens, collecting & cooking with produce
- Animal care – feeding, providing water, cleaning cages/pens and bedding, collecting eggs, bathing and exercising animals
- As the weather warms up, you can extend your child’s outdoor learning at home too. Here are some ideas to get started!
We’ve created this great parent reference guide to help you get started.
Click here to download your guide with ideas for extending your child’s outdoor learning in:
- Practical Life
- Sensorial Exploration
- Gross Motor Development
- Observation of Nature
- Curricular Connections: Maths, Science, Art, Language
Observe and Adapt
As with all prepared environments, the key is observation. What captures our children’s curiosity? Where are they returning again and again? What challenges are they facing?
By observing carefully, we can adjust to our children’s needs and interests. A prepared environment supports the whole child and helps them feel connected, not just to the earth, but to themselves and their community.
