Montessori observed that children want big, meaningful tasks that help them engage in their culture and community. Carrying large buckets certainly is big work! And being trusted with the tools and appliances is very engaging for young children.

Activities like collecting sap to boil help bring meaningful work to the outside environment, and connect the children to the natural world and the changes of the seasons. Food is a wonderful way to engage young children and support concentration because of the sensory experiences involved in food preparation. The Bluebird class expressed excitement as they felt the heaviness of the sap, smelled the boiling sap, smelled the cooking pancakes, felt the warmth of the food, and finally tasted their treat. Additionally, through their efforts, the children felt immense pride when they accomplished their goal!

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The Marine Masters, the Namaste elementary robotics team, secured two trophies at the First Lego League competition, on Saturday, January 25th. The robotics championship arrived after months of hard work building and customizing their robot, coding for missions, and preparing a research presentation on deep sea diving. The first award the team received was for the most overall points scored by their robot over their three trials. The final award was for the overall championship, awarded to the team that performed best overall. They not only scored well in the robotic competition, but also presented their research project skillfully, and demonstrated the core values of the league: discovery, innovation, impact, inclusion, teamwork, and fun.

The team researched suits for deep sea diving with the hopes of supporting human efforts to understand and care for the earth’s oceans. The robot tasks included pulling, pushing, turning, striking, and gathering of objects on the table of challenges. The team members built custom attachments for their robot and coded the robot to move carefully through obstacles. Small groups of two students controlled the robot for each timed run of the competition. This early introduction to robotics and coding supports the students in their future building and engineering goals!

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The primary environment is connected to a fenced courtyard that includes tables, gardens, and work benches for using tools. The outside activities often include things like painting and washing cloths. Garden work includes activities such as weeding, watering, and cutting flowers and herbs for the classroom. There are tools, such as hammers, saws, and hand drills, that offer the children fine motor practice. Children can also choose to bring their work or snack outside to a table. The children enjoy hearing the birds and feeling the warm sunshine and cool breezes!

The indoor/outdoor classroom is somewhat weather dependent, but the children go outside year-round! When the weather turns cold, the children continue to go outside to explore the playground, and bring in things from the natural world to explore. The take hikes around the property and help collect sap for maple syrup. However activities like using tools or easel painting have to move inside or await space in the spring.

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Exploring the natural world is an important part of the Montessori curriculum. The children enjoy observing the amazing changes in the world around them. Often these projects just arrive when a child finds a caterpillar in their garden! Or a child asks to bring in a tank of tadpoles. The children often find praying mantises and walking sticks in our outdoor courtyard. There is so much to discover in our world! Bringing some of these amazing seasonal experiences inside supports their sense of wonder and their love of the environment around them. Raising butterflies also offers opportunities to develop patience, gentleness, responsibility, and the ability to let go. The children feel the simultaneous joy and sadness of letting the butterflies out into the world where anything can happen.

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Our elementary students learned about the growing of wheat and milling of flour, the creation of sourdough starters, and the kneading, shaping, and baking of bread this spring! With guidance and support from staff from Wide Awake Bakery and Farmer Ground Flour, the children enjoyed in-class visits and field trips to gain hand-on experiences with the processes of farming grain and making bread. The children worked in groups to maintain their own sourdough starters and experienced the tangy shifts in flavors and then made their own loafs of bread to bring home to their families!

Hands on, sensory experiences are essential to Montessori education. Children learn and retain more when their learning involves meaningful projects, movement, and multiple senses. Many thanks to our parents for their motivation to create and support this project with the class!

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Poultry sciences are part of our annual curriculum at Namaste. Our chickens laid fertile eggs, thanks to our not-so-friendly rooster, and the elementary children were able to incubate and raise three chicks this spring! The children were able to observe at every step of the process. They candled the eggs to see the embryos form, and watched them hatch and grow. The life cycle is more fascinating and memorable when you get to watch and experience it!

Montessori observed that engaging the children in real, meaningful tasks led to more inspiration to learn. While it may seem obvious, this is an often overlooked aspect of education. Our elementary students have regular, hands-on projects that engage their senses and create solid memories. These projects lead to greater interest in related curriculum areas. In this case, the students were tracking data, managing temperature, maintaining safe conditions, researching types of chickens and their needs, and budgeting costs for care.

The Namaste Friends 4H club supports poultry sciences as part of the school curriculum. The children learn how to care for animals and if interested, can even show animals at the 4H youth fair. Namaste partners with Cornell Cooperative Extension and 4H to provide several other integrated 4H projects including robotics, coding, natural fibers, and Namastea.

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