Samvada News Bureau (Inputs by Ms Shanti)
Connecting children with nature at a young age is so important.In fact, nature inspires creativity in children and allows them to use all their senses. In the month of November 2022, children at school were introduced to “Our Green World” – Plants and Trees. We discussed about the different parts of a plant, seed germination, life cycle of a plant and its uses through various activities that we organised.
Panchshila Montessori School has one acre of open green area which enables us to teach and bring children closer to nature. We took children for “Nature Walk” to explore the various plants and flowers in the school. Nature Walk encourages the children to observe with all their senses. They enjoyed walking on the grass, feeling the twigs and the branches of the trees, observing the myriad colours of different kinds of leaves, smelling the fragrances of the flowers, feeling the warmth of the sun. As they went along on the walk they collected different types of leaves, twigs and flowers for the nature table of the school. We had organized many hands on activities with terminology cards, plant jigsaw, matching of real fruits and vegetables with picture cards. Children collected different flowers and we enjoyed a flower decoration activity the Montessori way in the class. The “Shelling of the peas” activity was enjoyed the most by the children.We had also organized “peeling baby potatoes” activity and had fun eating potato chaat thereafter. A vegetable vendor’s visit to school was organized which the children truly loved.
