Kimberly Zerfas, Author at Greenspring Montessori School

Earth Day Celebrations at Greenspring

As part of our Allegiance to Nature at Greenspring Montessori School, our faculty and staff organized a special Earth Day event for our children and families. Our Toddler, Children’s House, Elementary, and Adolescent classes took on various projects around our campus including planting stations, nature-based story walks, and nature scavenger hunts. Many classes also worked to restore natural spaces on campus and make improvements to their outdoor environments. In addition, there are many beautiful books on display in the library on Earth Day, Spring, Gardening, and more!

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After school it began to rain, but many families still joined in to help spruce up the campus grounds. We would like to extend a special thanks to all of our families who volunteered to help make this event a success! If you would like to support any of our current outdoor projects by volunteering or donating supplies, please reach out to us here.

It was beautiful to see everyone coming together for this purposeful community event! Take a look below to see photos and more details about the projects at each level.

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Toddlers

Our Toddlers visited the planting station in the morning to prepare small seedlings to bring home. They also worked together to spruce up their outdoor environments and plant zinnias in the garden bed outside of Monocacy House.

Children’s House

In preparation for Earth Day, our Children’s House classrooms hosted a week of waste-free lunches. The Children’s House Guides read stories about how waste impacts the environment and what we can do to help. The students then took a closer look at the waste the classes generated during a typical lunch. Together they talked about how waste impacts people, animals, and our environment. In addition to their waste-free lunch efforts, the children also weighed their compost collectively to see how they are helping to remove waste from landfills just by the small step we each take when we compost our food scraps.

Our Children’s House team was inspired to take on this initiative after learning more about the Roots & Shoots Program by Jane Goodall. To learn more about our Children’s House Roots & Shoots lessons, please click here.

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“People are so overwhelmed by the magnitude of our folly that they feel helpless. They sink into apathy and despair, lose hope, and so do nothing. We must find ways to help people understand that each one of us has a role to play, no matter how small. Every day we make some impact on the planet. And the cumulative effect of millions of small ethical actions will truly make a difference.”

– Jane Goodall, The Book of Hope

Elementary & Adolescents

Our Elementary children sowed vegetable and flower seeds in their outdoor gardens.They are also preparing to extend their garden area in order to grow wine plants including gourds, pumpkins, squash, and watermelon.

Our Adolescents tended to the rain garden they designed and planted on campus last spring, mending the deer fencing, wedding, and adding new plants.

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Families

We also celebrated Earth Day with our families at our Spring Grounds Day. 37 volunteers came out to give back to our school by helping to beautify and maintain the Greenspring campus. Parents, grandparents, and children helped with everything from weeding and planting to window washing and fence staining. Thank you to everyone who came out to join us!

Thank you for your support as we celebrate Earth Day and help inspire the future generation of stewards for our planet.

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“Hope is contagious Your actions inspire others.”

– Jane Goodall

Celebration of Writers in our Elementary Program

This spring our Elementary classrooms each hosted a Celebration of Writers where students read their original works to family and friends. This year we had works of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and more! The students worked very diligently to generate, revise, and complete their own original works of writing that they were eager to share with family and friends. Our Elementary students have worked diligently on their public speaking skills as well, practicing reading their original works to several classmates.

Our Celebration of Writers is an opportunity for the Elementary students to feel a sense of valorization – that they are capable of creating compelling stories and they have unique gifts to offer their community. Valorization is an important piece of the Montessori philosophy that can support the child’s confidence, initiative, and love of learning.

Celebration of Writers Update
By Harelle, 3rd grade Greenspring writer

Our Celebration of Writers began at 2 o’clock on the 12th of April, 2024. We had been writing and editing with Writers’ Workshop Guide John Pierce since October 2023. Mr. John is an amazing Outdoor Environment teacher and we all love him (he’s a really good teacher).

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A Celebration of Writers is when each Elementary class chooses a date, invites the parents, and presents to the parents. The event is held in honor of Writers’ Workshop and our writing skills getting better (including spelling and handwriting), and starting to write longer, more juicy detailed stories. We can impress you with our skills. For example, if you went to your child’s Celebration of Writers expecting to hear your child read a story about cats that isn’t very long and they surprise you by reading a story that is 5 pages long and about detectives! Last but not least, each class ends with a special song or poem made with Mr. John with the tune to a song. We hope you enjoyed this update!

Thank you to all who joined us in celebrating the works and accomplishments of our Elementary writers!

School Partnership with Montessori Lancaster in Mérida, Yucatán

We are happy to announce an exciting new partnership with Montessori Lancaster in Mérida, Yucatán in Mexico. We have been diligently working for two years to identify and partner with an established Montessori school in Latin America to provide children and adolescents at both schools an opportunity to connect with peers across cultures.

As part of our capstone experience, our Adolescent students will be traveling to Mérida this spring to meet students at our sister school for the first time. Throughout the school year, our Adolescents have been diving into a deeper understanding of the Spanish language and cultures in Latin America.

Our Sister School Committee is led by Sra. Ale Equivel Castillo, our Dual Language Guide, and comprised of staff members committed to establishing a global partnership where our children and adolescents can establish lasting relationships across cultures. We thank all members of our Committee including Natalia Torres (Toddler Dual Langauge Assistant), Fernanda White (Lower Elementary Dual Langauge Assistant), Sylvia Glassco (Dual Language Director and Director of the Adolescent Program), and GiGi Gould (Advancement Assistant).

Ale has worked to establish a partnership with Lancaster Montessori in her own hometown of Mérida. She visited the school during a recent trip to Yucatán and I felt in love with the staff and the school. Lancaster has a large Adolescent Program and we are looking forward to visiting their class in the spring for a seven day trip. Our students will have an opportunity to get to know the Adolescents at Lancaster. They will also be visiting Chichén Itzá, an ancient Mayan city named one of the new seven wonders of the world, and venturing into the local community for several cultural experiences!

Lower Elementary Children Explore Natural History Through Going Outs

Our Lower Elementary children have been inspired recently by natural history and early humans. After receiving the first three Great Lessons – The Coming of the Universe, The Timeline of Life, and The Coming of Humans, they have initiated their own research on everything from early humans to the giant octopus. In true Montessori fashion, they have each been eagerly learning more about their chosen topics through research, field trips, and Going Outs.

Our Redbud and Mulberry classes recently visited the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History to explore the Human Origins exhibit along with many of the other wonders of the natural world! The children became interested in learning more about early humans after receiving the third Great Lesson, The Coming of Humans.⁠ This Third Great Lesson focuses on early humans and the three things that set us apart from the rest of the animals around us: a mind to imagine, hands to work, and a heart to love others. This Great Lesson is the first story to include humans and sets the stage for the many wonderful, historic inventions humanity birthed from the time they entered our timeline through the current day.

A small group of Lower Elementary students also went on a Going Out to the National Aquarium in Baltimore to research the giant octopus, sea slugs, and the peacock mantis shrimp. They each confirmed those creatures were there before going and they printed out directions to and from the aquarium to direct their chaperone. When they arrived, each student explored the aquarium to search for the exhibit that they were researching. They found out when they arrived that unfortunately the no longer lived at the aquarium. Determined to leave with information, these students asked aquarium staff about this animal and were able to get some interesting facts. In the rainforest exhibit, they were able to spot two out of three sloths, which was a highlight for everyone. They were also able to learn about and touch horseshoe crabs and jellyfish in the touch tanks. Shark Alley was the most exciting to explore, where they spotted a Sand Tiger Shark, a Sawtooth Shark and the Blacktip Reef shark.

Going Outs and field trips are an essential component of the Montessori Elementary experience. These tangible real-world opportunities are essential for our children to begin to engage with the larger world, and they can spark deeper, meaningful learning experiences.

A Celebration of the Gifts of Autumn

In November we held our whole school Gifts of Autumn gathering. The children shared gratitudes, poems, songs, and nature finds. They “broke bread” together and enjoyed one another’s company.⁠ It was such a joy to see all of our children and adolescents together before the Fall Break. Enjoy a few photos below!