Family life today is diverse. However, we are all connected in the stewardship of the land that our children and grandchildren will inherit. Our Montessori voice is asking: How can we provide children with real experiences in the outdoors that will re-connect the child to love and respect the natural environment? Not only to love the natural environment, but to have the independent skills and knowledge to sustain a healthy life for themselves and our communities in the future.

The young child between three and six years is creating an understanding of their world in brilliant snapshots of visual, auditory, and kinesthetic experiences.  Exploring outdoors within a safe environment, with interested parents or adults, creates a shared experience. A shared experience with the addition of language creates meaning. Exploration and observation is a process which re-connects the child to nature. It is easy, natural and when it’s a whole-family experience, a lot of fun!

What purposeful work can we provide for the child at home that will acknowledge the changing seasons and bring the child into synchronicity with the natural world? In autumn the first lesson in independence in the outdoors for the young child is learning to put on gumboots, a warm jacket and hat. The second lesson is to agree on safety. Provide a fenced site for independent exploration. Observation is essential.  Natural environments look different in autumn compared with summer. What are the differences in colour, texture, and light in your environment? Spend time to look around.

If you don’t have a garden already, consider creating one. Dig up the lawn and plant. In late April, May and June plant lettuce, broad beans, silver beet, celery and beetroot. Plant marigolds, rosemary and sage amongst the vegetables: this companion planting helps control pests. Sew baby carrot seeds in soil and mark the row with a string line to guide watering. Plant garlic cloves on the shortest day around rose bushes, apple or peach trees.

Provide child-sized tools that really work for your child – a metal fork, trowel, leaf rake, bucket and watering can. Make compost with your kitchen and garden waste - layer compost with dry material like hay, to limit weed growth.  Rake the autumn leaves and make a compost heap to provide nutrients for the soil. Think about a making a worm farm. Worm tea provides rich micro organisms for the soil. Healthy soil grows healthy vegetables. Build a pinecone bird feeder for the native birds, and scatter bread crumbs to feed the thrushes that eat the garden predators, like snails and slugs.

Involve your children in these activities – no matter their age there are many tasks they can assist with or be responsible for and everyone gets a huge sense of satisfaction from the first seedlings to merge and the first plants harvested.

Bronwyn Norman, Wa Ora Montessori School, Lower Hutt, New Zealand

There are increasingly impassioned calls for parents to allow their children to grow up at a slower rate; to reduce the organised activities and to give children the time to simply sit and daydream. Montessori learning environments are prepared so that children can be independently active, choosing what they need to do to satisfy their own inner needs. Sometimes children simply want to observe. These wet, wild, wintry weekends are a great time to slow down and stop rushing about.

Take a look around your house – how can you organise it so it works better for everyone? Can your younger children access activities that could keep them happily engaged for hours while the rain beats on the window? Can your older children help re-organise and take ownership for their space so that their needs are met? Can you talk together about the house rules – about how clean-up will happen after a long and happy day ‘doing’?  Are there family activities that you all enjoy better when it is winter – plans to make, places to discover, stories to share and songs to sing ?

Here are some ideas for fun to have indoors this winter;

Cooking
Winter is a perfect time to slow down, share some time in the kitchen and pass on some great practical skills to your children of all ages. Even young children can make great scones or simple biscuits if you simply measure the ingredients out and provide a little assistance. Turn it into an occasion and invite family or friends for afternoon tea. Older children enjoy discovering ‘food from around the globe’. Do some research on the internet, choose an ethnic meal and head out to buy some ingredients to make a special Sunday night feast. Or teach them how to make the perfect Kiwi Sunday night roast. Making pickles and chutneys is a great team activity; filling the house with glorious smells. You all get to stand close to the stove, stirring while it is cold outside. Your children can help write labels and perhaps share a jar or two with neighbours.

Arts and Crafts
Set up some new art and craft activities. Depending on the age of your children you may consider having resources for collage, play dough, colouring, drawing, origami and painting. To help you set these art activities so your child can access and use them independently, without your house becoming a bomb-site, ask your child’s Montessori teachers for some tips and go to see how it happens at school. Older children, even boys, may relish being taught to knit or crochet (ask your grandma for help!) and you can find instructions on the internet for French knitting using a wooden reel, nails and wool.

Construction
Boxes, blocks, Duplo, Lego, a pile of blankets – let your child’s imagination run wild! If you are happy for your living area to be turned into a play area for a wet afternoon your children can have a marvellous time building huts using blankets across armchairs and over tables. Huge cardboard boxes can be used to make houses – children love to cut window, doors, and decorate their house. Older children often like to make huts in areas of the house away from parents – bedroom cupboards can be fun. See if they can do it in an area of the house where the construction can remain safely intact; children often like to return to continue the playing.

Home Entertainment
Either join in or be an appreciative audience – your children (and friends) can create a concert or show for the family including ticketing, costumes and backstage assistance! The preparation and negotiation can take a while and I guarantee you will agree ‘this is better than TV’ by the end! Listening to stories is a wonderful experience for children and even young children can operate a tape deck or CD player. Older children may be keen to create and record their own stories or radio show. Children of all ages love being read to, so start a family book … perhaps a novel that all your family can enjoy and can be read aloud over several days or weeks. Tell some stories – cuddled up on the couch is a great time to share all those family stories; stories of grandparents, stories of the old days, stories of ‘when you were young’…

And when being inside is no longer enough, pull on a jersey, raincoat and boots and go outside to explore the wintry world together.

Ana Pickering and Sola Freeman, Montessori Aotearoa New Zealand

Spring deserves a celebration after such a cold, wild winter. Spring celebrations are part of many cultures around the world: cherry blossom festivals in Japan, the spring festival of Holi in India and May Day celebrations in Europe. It is a season of gratitude and of expectation.

A spring celebration could simply be a walk under blossom laden boughs or through a daffodil strewn field. What spring sight makes your heart soar when you glimpse it? Is there a place in your neighbourhood or town that your family likes to visit every spring?  Rhododendron groves are magical places to walk under and through. Have you discovered all the spring treasures in your botanical gardens or park?

When my children were younger we used play a game of spying all the magnolia trees in bloom as we drove through town. ‘Magnolia, magnolia,’ we would cry. Another favourite was to stand under the cherry blossoms and snow petals down into hair and upturned faces.

Your spring celebration could be as simple as marvelling at the first iris to emerge in your garden or clusters of cheerful flowers lovingly placed around your house. If you have a spring garden your children could pick flowers to take to their centre or school.

You could research spring celebrations from around the world with your children and plan a special ‘spring’ feast complete with table decorations. Involve your children in planning, food preparation and decorating. What special spring flavours can you all savour? The first taste of asparagus? You could plan a spring picnic and include lots of active games for everyone to keep warm in the blustery spring winds – hula hoops, balls, skipping ropes and bicycles.

Spring is a wonderful time to be outdoors and watch the rebirth of nature: find the first green buds and talk to your children about how nature starts over and replenishes itself every spring. See if you can spot any birds building a nest. Take the idea of spring cleaning outdoors into your garden and involve your children in cleaning up any debris left over from autumn and winter; rubbish, along with dead leaves.
Children love spring more than anyone. After spending hours indoors they can’t wait to break out and play outside. Spring is indeed a harbinger of joy.

Ana Pickering, Montessori Aotearoa New Zealand

Most parents want their children to appreciate and enjoy nature, like they did when they were young. There is just something about connecting with the natural world, whether it is playing in the woods or building a tree house. We need these kinds of experiences to feed our soul. We hope to rear children who will be wise and responsible when it’s their turn to make decisions affecting our beautiful planet. But children today don’t often have the kinds of opportunities that we had not so long ago. Natural ’wild’ areas are less available, many children are ’overscheduled’ and parents fear for their child’s safety.

How can we go about connecting our children to nature, and helping them to love it? Children develop a relationship with nature when they have regular opportunities to explore the natural world through hands-on experiences and play. This can take place in your own backyard, the local park, or the beach. Here are some suggestions to share nature with your child.

Summer is the time of monarch butterflies. This is the time to plant swan plants with your child. The monarch butterfly uses swan plants to lay its eggs. You can help your child to spot the tiny eggs on the leaves, observe the growing caterpillar, watch the change into a chrysalis and marvel at the final emergence of the adult butterfly.

Birdwatching is a great nature activity to do with young children. You can hang a bird feeder just outside the window and show your child how to sit quietly so that the birds won’t be afraid or you can take your child outside into your backyard or your local park. Your own backyard will be home to thrushes, blackbirds, sparrows and maybe a tui and some waxeyes. Young children are very capable of sitting quietly and watching. A bird guide and binoculars are helpful, but not essential.

A whole new world opens up under the bark of a tree stump. Slugs, slaters, snails, and many other little crawlies make decomposing tree stumps their home. You might have a stump in your firewood pile. Bring it out into the garden and wait a few days. A magnifying glass and a set of small garden tools provides hours of exploration and discovery fun. A collection of several tree stumps can serve for balancing, climbing, and jumping. You can also find a tree that is close and handy. Watch it regularly. Make rubbings of the tree bark. Collect some leaves and dry them. Help your child make a list of animals that live in or visit the tree. Does the tree produce food people can eat, such as apples or nuts? If so, collect some of them and prepare or share them together.

Exposure to the natural world is essential for a child’s wellbeing. Nature inspires a sense of wonder, the beginning of wisdom. Holidays are a great opportunity for your child to play outdoors. Making mudcakes, watching clouds, jumping in rain puddles, building dams, picking berries, running through a meadow, the list goes on. Let your child be a child and experience the miracles of nature this summer.

Anja Geelen, Tawa Montessori Preschool, Tawa, Wellington, New Zealand