Inside Outside

"The land is where our roots are.  

The children must be taught to feel and live 
in harmony with the earth."

Maria Montessori

Isabel has been engaged in this creation of sticks down in the forest since her first week with us a month ago. It's a castle, a hiding place, a fort, a work of art, and it is largely her project, although she allows other kids to add to it occasionally.  (I've had to protect it a bit from destruction!)  It is balanced, intricate, and utterly natural. Watching her, a new Chickadee child engaged in our outside environment for the first time, has inspired me to reflect again on the profound importance of the children spending time outside, daily, in this natural landscape.

Richard Louv has brought this issue of children and nature to the forefront of our cultural consciousness in recent years.  His book Last Child in the Woods has had a major impact, at least on thinking parents, researchers, and alternative schools, if not on mainstream education.   "Natural playscapes" is a buzzword now.  In Louv's words: "A widening circle of researchers believes that the loss of natural habitat, or the disconnection from nature even when it is available, has enormous implications for human health and child development.  They say the quality of exposure to nature affects our health at an almost cellular level." 

So I am reflecting on these children in our woods, and it's Isabel and her sticks, and Rex connecting with a tree, and Lucas discovering the mushrooms, and Brady and Charlotte raking - and it's the beauty of the fall in general - and it's all of these together - that I want to share with you. Most of you do not have the freedom to spend your days in nature.  But this is what you have made possible for your children.  When looking out our big back window this week, in the midst of whatever part of his or her day, this view is what has beckoned your children.  This is what has filled their eyes. 

For this precious, transient season, we have had the beauty of leaves from our Japanese maple, with leaf pressing and leaf raking and leaf piling and kids jumping and wheelbarrow pushing to the chicken yard. It's so fun, and so impermanent.  We sing several autumn songs these days, and one favorite has this refrain: "Days of in between, see the changing scene, autumn time is all around."     Its melody, in a minor key, has a magical hold on the children, and they sing it well. Perhaps it helps confirm with music these inexpressible moments of connection with nature.

Meanwhile, out the front window, "I'm back!"  Our Anna's hummingbird returned a few weeks ago.  I am quite convinced that it's the same single or pair who were with us all last winter and spring, and who then migrated elsewhere for summer.  Now he and/or she stops at the feeder on the front porch many times a day, up close and personal for the kids.    
Someone is always calling out, "There's the hummingbird!"  
And behind the hummingbird has been this last, amazing, and somewhat aberrant cosmos, which burst into bloom long after all the other cosmos were finished.  Our last flowers of 2012 for sure.

Of course, the rains came back, and so did the mushrooms.  Once again, I am resolving to take a mushroom-identification class, or at least get a good book, because I don't know them at all, and when I google these specimens, it's overwhelming.  First we had what we call "fairy mushrooms," little delicate white ones, all over the forest. Then a few patches of this very large and sturdy species developed, and they are still appearing.  Simultaneously, a delicate dancer of a mushroom showed up right in our path.  These didn't last long, though we tried to protect them with a tent of sticks. There's only so much we can do....

And of course the trees.  Our beautiful blessed trees.  Rex was just hanging out close to this Douglas fir a few days ago, experiencing it, looking closely at its bark. He leaned up against the trunk and so I encouraged him to turn his head up, to follow the trees with his eyes all the way as far as he could see.  My camera couldn't do the sight justice, but I tried, and you get the idea.  All Rex could say was, "Wow."  It was a beautiful, peaceful moment.

"There is no description, no image in any book that is capable of replacing the sight of real trees, and all the life to be found around them in a real forest."  These are Maria Montessori's words, written so many years ago.  She seems to me to have been standing in a direct line which connects William Wordsworth to John Muir to Richard Louv, with herself speaking with such prescience for the child in nature.   IN nature, with flowers and mushrooms and trees and birds and all the inexpressible, amazing manifestations of the one Life that animates us all.

  

Grace and Courtesy

“What is social life if not the solving of social problems, 

behaving properly and pursuing aims acceptable to all?                     

Maria Montessori

"Grace and Courtesy" is the traditional Montessori term for our modeling, and the children's consequent learning and mastering, all the aspects and details needed to live and work together every day in relative peace and harmony.  It involves an extended process of development for your children, piece by piece, over time. They are primed to learn, because social interaction is such a core part of our humanity.  So every year in the fall we pay special attention to very specific lessons in many different areas of our interdependent relationships in this children's house.  Our goal is for each child to feel comfortable, respected, and secure in his or her interactions with others, and for each child to support other children in feeling the same way.

These lessons in grace and courtesy are broken down into categories.   First must come caring for oneself - how to get a drink of water, how to hang a coat, how to put on a jacket independently, how to handle inside-out sleeves, how to wash hands, how to use a tissue and dispose of it, how to cough into one's elbow, and so on.  Each of these basic activities is presented as a lesson, and then another slightly different lesson, and then practice, and daily life unfolding, and help from one another.  For instance, did you know we ask the kids to use the little loops in their jackets to hang them up?  This is helpful for two reasons:  the jacket hangs more securely, and it doesn't hang so low, so as not to obscure our view of the boots.  Of course, every coat doesn't have that handy loop, and that's on our list as a sewing project.  But most of the kids are doing it now.  And most of the kids are mastering most of these other basic skills.

The next category of Grace and Courtesy is caring for our environment - how to clean up a spill using a sponge, how to dust, how to fold our simple laundry, how to sweep using a table crumber,  how to sweep using a broom, and ah, how to sweep cooperatively with another person....

Noah and Charlotte really worked at this sweeping last week, practicing how to make a little pile and then use a dustpan.  Let's just say, it was not an effort without some argument, some small power struggle; I stayed very close by. They'll have many chances to practice some more.

Each of these activities gets specific attention from us, and each needs focused practice by the child.  None of it just comes naturally.  We can't expect a child to know by osmosis how to sweep, or how to clean a table.  Just learning to rinse and squeeze a sponge effectively takes time.   "Oh look, your table is all wet.  Let me remind you how to squeeze out that sponge better.  Do you know where the green cloth is for drying tables?  That's what you should do next....."  Many such mini-lessons happen every single day.

Then there is the whole area of learning to engage in their shared and separate work with respect and cooperation.  A whole series of lessons is included here:  how to use the work rugs, how to walk around rugs, how to put away an activity ready for the next child, how to let one another do their work without interfering or interrupting, and so on.

Here you see Julian, happily using the "ferrous/non-ferrous" magnet sorting work.  Notice how Brady was watching him with his hands behind his back?  There's a whole set of grace and courtesy lessons embedded here.  First, Brady asked, "Julian, can I watch you work?"  He remembered to do this on his own - he's been here more than a year now, and he understands how important this is.  Julian could have said yes or no.  If he said no, Brady would have walked away.    But he said yes, so Brady put his hands behind his back; this helps him remember not to touch or interfere with Julian.  He watched for a while, and then moved on.  Julian kept going.  And think of it - as he played with the magnet, Julian also experienced Brady modeling that respect, which then became part of his own developing awareness of others.

Finally, and so important, we address the interpersonal courtesies which inform and shape our social relationships.  How to greet one another, how to say "excuse me"or "thank you," how to ask a teacher for help, how to ask for a hug, how to offer a snack to a friend, how to listen to one another in group, how to share a conversation....

Collin has done the banana serving many times now - he thrives with the independence of preparing the banana for serving, and he loves walking around offering pieces to his friends.  He is learning to ask politely and not just shove the plate into another child's field of vision.  This is huge for him, to ask,  "Would you like a piece of banana?"  And then in response he hopefully hears, "yes, thank you Collin."  Finally, he completes the cycle by washing his dishes, getting it all ready for the next person.

Learning how to care for one another in such concrete and specific ways, how to interact in a respectful manner, how to co-create a peaceful classroom, is probably the most critical life skill the children are learning here. Grace and courtesy.  Together they are creating something that is greater than the sum of its parts - a daily experience of a warm, loving, safe, and kind learning community.  And with support, that learning will stay with them, as a part of their being, from here on into adulthood.