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Outdoor Learning at Echo Hill Outdoor School

Outdoor Learning at Echo Hill Outdoor School

During the first week of school, our Upper Elementary students ventured to Echo Hill Outdoor School for a three-day outdoor learning experience. Echo Hill is located on the Eastern Shore of Maryland with 242 acres of forests, meadows, and freshwater shrub swamp bordering a mile of sandy beach on the Chesapeake Bay. This trip was a great opportunity for the Upper Elementary students to live close to nature and learn about our environment and our place within the natural world. The students enjoyed learning about many interesting topics like swamp biology, how to experience the environment through all our senses, wilderness survival, and bay biology.

The students worked on a small fishing boat and experienced firsthand the living creatures of the Chester River. They discussed the ecological value of an estuary like the bay. Groups collected aquatic animals including freshwater eel, blue crabs, and fish which they had a chance to touch. Students learned the local history of bay communities, the environmental challenges fishermen are now facing, and so much more.

The trip also provided ample opportunities for community building as well. Students and adults learned to depend on one another and live in close quarters without devices. They worked together during the day to complete a ropes course and enjoyed many team-building activities. The students came home tired and happy.

Outdoor learning is an important element of Montessori education and a major focus at Greenspring Montessori School. The students’ retreat at the start of the school year is a key part of their study of nature and the interconnectedness of all living things. This is one of two major outdoor trips for our Upper Elementary students – the second will be a culminating trip in the spring. In alignment with this focus on the natural world, our students will be focusing a portion of their time at school on agriculture and ecology. They go for regular hikes in the local forests, conduct field experiments, and learn from naturalists in the area. On campus, the students will have many exciting projects this year to build vegetable gardens and start a community agriculture program.

Spiritual Preparation of the Adult

Spiritual Preparation of the Adult

During the 2023-24 school year, Greenspring Montessori School is focusing on the theme of the Spiritual Nature of the Child. As part of this initiative, our work will focus on the spiritual preparation of the adult. 

Below are several of the ways that Montessori educators and parents can support their own spiritual development and fill their cups in order to be fully present for our children. 

Provide space and time for spiritual exploration
In a busy world, it is easy to get caught up in the daily to-do list. By racing through life and checking things off, we are neglecting our need for quiet, peaceful moments of calm and self-reflection. Our staff summarized several of the ways that they are able to stop and slow down with a mindful moment. 

  • Spending time in nature 
  • Journaling
  • Yoga, tai chi, chi gung, dance
  • Meditation, mindfulness, and/or prayer
  • Silently repeating a simple word (“Peace, Peace”) or phrase (“May all beings be happy.”)
  • Walking a labyrinth
  • Reading poetry
  • Painting or other creative expressions
  • Create a gratitude practice

 

We had the pleasure of speaking with Rachel Shatananda on our Voices in Montessori Podcast, for an episode on Creating Space and Structures for Calm and Peace in an Age of Overwhelm. Rachel joins us to talk about supporting children with their spiritual development, including what it looks like for us to create space for ourselves as adults and to create space for the child. Rachel discusses these big topics and more by describing the practices and strategies she has used successfully in her classrooms.

Establishing daily habits that promote self-awareness and inner harmony gives us a greater capacity to nurture peace in our classrooms and homes. Cultivating a peaceful inner life is the foundation for observing and interacting with children with calmness and respect. There are mindfulness and awareness exercises, as well as excellent books that can help us learn to respond from our hearts.

As parents and educators, we have so much on our plates. Start with something small and doable, like taking slow, deep breaths for a minute or two. Then appreciate yourself for remembering to nurture your inner spirit. This practice, however brief, can help you to connect with and nurture the light and inner lives of the children. One of the beautiful things we’ve found is that these techniques can be used with children as well as adults.

“The present moment is one of power, of magic or miracle if we could ever be wholly in it and awake to it.”

– D.M. Dooling

Spiritually prepared adults bring their own joy and delight to the classroom daily. These strategies and others help Montessori educators and parents maintain a joyful heart and model ways to care for themselves. Part of our goal this year is supporting children in articulating their experiences and emotions of beauty, power, grace, brilliance, love, or even the joy of being alive. Join us in this important work!

Sharing your Culture and Traditions

Sharing your Culture and Traditions

At Greenspring Montessori School, we welcome and celebrate people of diverse backgrounds, histories, perspectives, identities, cultures, religions, and races. Our learning environment is strengthened and enriched through a community that reflects the nuances and beauty of an intricate and complex world.

Welcoming Statement

Our children, families, staff, and community come from a rich variety of backgrounds. We love to invite everyone in our community into the classrooms to speak about holidays and traditions that are important to you. In the 2022-23 school year, our families and staff graciously volunteered their time to present about holidays including Rosh Hashanah, Hanal Pixan, Diwali, Veterans Day, Winter Solstice, Kwanzaa, Lunar New Year, Black History Month, Passover, Vaisakhi, Shavuot, and Memorial Day. In addition, several classrooms hosted visitors to share about their cultures. Our children love these opportunities to see windows into the cultures of others as well as great pride in sharing and seeing their own cultures and traditions in the classrooms.

Take a look at photographs from our classroom celebrations and presentations from last school year. We are looking forward to continuing and expanding upon these traditions for the 2023-24 school year.

How to get involved

We invite you to please let us know about your child’s own cultural background and the holidays they celebrate. To do so, please log in to the Parent Portal, click on your child’s name, and look for the fields related to culture and holidays. Please also reach out to us at learn@greenspringmontessori.org if you would be interested in giving a presentation to our children on your traditions and celebrations.

Update the Parent Portal
Why Cartoon-Character-Free?

Why Cartoon-Character-Free?

Children's House - Greenspring Montessori School
It is our policy that children and adolescents may not wear clothing or backpacks and lunchboxes that display large logos, brand-name, or images from for-profit entities such as commercial cartoon characters. Character and logo-free clothing help support our children’s concentration and focus.

Our goal is to create a non-commercialized environment for our children. We are fostering an environment where we minimize outside distractions and pull for their attention, allowing the child’s imagination and creativity to take root without having to compete with the powerful call of the modeling of these commercial images and stories.

Our commitment is to creating prepared environments for optimal learning, exploration, creativity, and discovery. A child’s concentration is initially fragile, needing care and protection to develop and strengthen. Concentration, when cultured and grown, is what allows the child to focus on big work, think through problems, find creative solutions, and build both knowledge and understanding.

We must remember that for some children, concentration and focus are a tiny little seed that is just starting to take root. Any distraction – any excuse to think of Pokemon, Frozen, SpongeBob or some other commercially created character – will pull them away from building the neurological connections they are forging each time they concentrate deeply. While the imaginative or creative play connected to such characters may seem like a positive, it is actually a significant interruption that can profoundly interfere with children’s focus and learning at school.

Parents, grandparents, and caregivers can help us build and preserve the children’s focus. Please send children to school with character-free clothing, shoes, backpacks, lunch boxes, thermoses, water bottles, bedding (for nappers), etc. We also ask that shoes not have lights on them, as these are very distracting: many of our students are working on the floor, so every time the light-up shoes walk by, their attention is pulled from their work.

Please help us cherish and nurture concentration to help it propagate and flourish!

Preparing a Beautiful Meal in the Montessori Classroom

Preparing a Beautiful Meal in the Montessori Classroom

Preparing a Beautiful Meal is a daily Montessori practice in which children take ownership of creating a beautiful space for eating together. Beginning with our youngest children in the Toddler classrooms, these practices are instilled daily. The children are responsible for the setup each day, including laying a tablecloth or placemats, folding cloth napkins, and carefully carrying glasses, utensils, and glass or ceramic dishes. You will often see flowers on the tables that the children have arranged and placed to make the table more beautiful.

Children also participate in the clean-up process, including clearing the table, washing dishes, wiping down tables, and sweeping the floor. You see children collaborating and problem-solving during the process of setting up and cleaning up. Even cleaning up a spill or a broken dish is part of the learning! 

Above: Toddlers prepare snack and sit together for a beautiful meal.

During the meal, students have the opportunity to practice the Grace and Courtesy skills they have learned. For example, the children practice table manners, such as starting the meal together once everyone is seated, putting napkins on their laps, using utensils properly, chewing with their mouths closed, and excusing themselves from the table. They also practice conversational skills, such as taking turns speaking and asking each other questions.

 

We intentionally create these spaces for the children to engage with one another. For some, this may be the only meal of the day when they are able to sit down with others and engage in conversation. The children are in a sensitive period for developing these close bonds and sitting at a table together is an opportunity to meet those essential developmental needs.

How can families support in this initiative?

The case for real plates
You may have seen many adorable plastic bento boxes in your back-to-school shopping, however, we find that these can be challenging for children to open and scoop their food onto their plates. The same is true for squeeze yogurts and foods in plastic packaging. These are excellent for families when you are on the go, but they are often difficult for the children to enjoy in the classroom.

With a Montessori beautiful meal, children empty the contents of their lunch onto a plate and/or bowl for a few reasons. First, it helps to create an atmosphere of a sit-down meal at home. And second, it gives them the opportunity to practice very precise fine motor skills of scooping with a spoon or fork. We are finding that more convenient items, such as squeeze yogurts and perfectly portioned bento boxes delay the child’s precision with some of those table skills.

If you have more questions about how our Beautiful Meal will work in your child’s classroom, please reach out to your child’s Guide. We are so excited to be able to move back to this beautiful and important structure!

Lower Elementary Campfire

Lower Elementary Campfire

Our Lower Elementary students and families celebrated the end of a spectacular school year with our annual campfire! Mr. John led the children in skits, songs, and jokes that were the hit of the evening. Thank you to our Lower Elementary team for making this event possible!