Birthdays should be celebrated and this week our school community celebrated the 150th birthday of Maria Montessori who was born on 31 August, 1870. Many are familiar with her extraordinary life as a physician, anthropologist and pedagogue. 

She opened the first Montessori school—the Casa dei Bambini, or Children’s House—in Rome on January 6 1907, which ultimately became the Montessori method of education based upon Maria Montessori’s scientific observations of those children. Subsequently, she travelled the world, wrote extensively about her approach to education and was nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize (1949, 1950, and 1951). Today, there are 22,000 Montessori schools across 110 countries, an incredible example of how one person’s actions can affect the lives of so many. It was wonderful to come together on Monday and celebrate the life of Maria Montessori and it has been fantastic to see how her birthday has been celebrated around the world. 

You may like to learn more about Maria Montessori through the eyes of her great granddaughter in a video made to commemorate her 150th birthday.  https://youtu.be/OQy4k1wcAJ0

Cathy France

Principal

As part of the transition program for Cycle 1 students moving to Cycle 2, we shared our snack with Ruth & Lauren’s class. It only took a short while for the Cycle 1 children to relax and enjoy the visit!

Over the past 5 weeks we have enjoyed the presence of Clinton Donald, a pre-service student teacher. The children were pleased to be able to show him our Montessori equipment, and Arthur really enjoyed showing him the checker board.

As part of our North America unit, we have begun to study famous people from the United States. We began with Martin Luther King and learned about his impact on the world. As a class we read a famous quote from his “I Have a Dream” speech and discussed how we would like to change the world. The children wrote down the dreams they have for our school, the community and the world. Mackenzie’s dream for the world is to “treat everyone kindly no matter what” and Indigo’s dream for the community is for “everyone to have a home.” 

For the last 10 years Cycle 3 has been running a values program called Service Learning. The program focus is giving service. There are two parts to the program - School Service and Community Service. School Service is giving service to the school community and Community Service is giving service to the wider community. This year we have had to focus on school service and put a hold on volunteering in the wider community. 

Students divide into small groups, finding other students in the Cycle 3 community that have similar interests in the type of service they would like to give to the school community. The children run lunchtime activities for three or more weeks for small groups of Cycle 1 or 2 students. This involves them writing a formal letter to a school staff member asking them to be a mentor, planning the activity they will offer, writing a lesson plan, running the session and evaluating their lesson, thinking about what worked well and what needs to be adjusted for the next week. Students practice an extensive amount of virtues, such as cooperation, organisation, patience, teamwork, resilience and of course giving service. Some of the sessions being offered this year have been - cooking, making bird feeders, sport clinics, stop motion animation, dance classes  &  IT tutorials.