From Castle to Museum Step 1

One sunny day last week some of the children at Southwater Montessori and I were out in the playground early in the morning. I saw the hollow blocks and wondered what it would look like if I put two long sloping pieces together, standing up, so I put them together and looked. I liked it and I decided to give them a bit of a base.

One of the children joined me and put some of the little pieces against the base of my triangle. Then he got long pieces and stood them up either side. I don’t remember whose idea it was to connect the two vertical rectangles with a ‘roof,’ but once that was done, there was no stopping the children.

From Castle to Museum Step Two

Tom became the ‘project manager’ in charge and he was the one who decided it was to be a castle. He knew what he wanted and communicated with great certainty. No child dared gainsay him and neither would they have wanted to, as Tom was charming as well as assertive and, most of all, happy and enthusiastic. My role became, entirely, that of the observer. I took photos and remained in the background.

From Castle to Museum Step Three

They ‘worked’ for many minutes and had a great time. The chair in the picture was for putting pieces on top as well as for the photo shoot of Tom and his team.

I left the children to their friends and other teachers and went inside for a while. When I came back the children had started ‘phase four.’ This involved ‘strengthening’ their construction with ‘cement.’ They applied generous helpings of sand to all available top surfaces and the result was very impressive. It was also at this stage that the ‘castle’ had become a ‘museum.’ Unfortunately I have no good photo of that phase, you’ll just have to take it on trust.

What’s certain is that the children had a wonderful morning and, likewise, we’d all had a great time watching them. It’s wonderful to see the children negotiating, supporting, laughing and spontaneously working as a more or less cohesive group with a purpose.

We are very grateful to Community Playthings in Kent, for their wonderful hollow blocks and to West Sussex County Council for their generous Capital Grant, allowing us to buy them.

On Saturday (19 June) at the Annual Montessori conference in London Gary Wilson, author of several books on boys’ achievement in education delivered a top-notch presentation to an appreciative audience. Gary has many years of experience as a teacher, LEA school improvement officer, free-lance consultant, author and speaker. His books include: Breaking Through The Barrier for Boys’ Achievement, How to Help Your Boy Succeed and Getting it Right for Girls and Boys.

I thought his talk was fabulous and his ideas deserve to be more widely known by parents and early years teachers. If you have a young son, why don’t you try out one or two of Gary’s ideas? If that whets your appetite you can always read one of his books or attend a talk to find out more.

1) Play together;
This is not so much play with jigsaws or games, but pretend play, where you get in role as another character (Superhero?). The play may be sparked by a book or a film, or by your son’s own ideas. The more fun you have as you use different voices, the more your son will enjoy it!

2) Talk about your actions;
As you go about your daily activities, talk about what you are doing. This helps him to absorb words almost effortlessly and to understand that they are important (NB A child’s vocabulary at the age of three is the biggest predictor of reading success at the age of ten).

3) Enjoy rhymes and songs together;
The English language has such a rich literature for children. For boys especially Barbar the Elephant stories, Thomas the Tank Engine, the works of Kipling and Lewis Carroll are fun and interesting.

4) Talk about the things you see around you;
As you notice things around you, inside, outside, in the car, on your way to the supermarket, talk about them to share your interest. Use the specific words that describe what you see, it might be a Frisian cow or a combine harvester, a Porsche Boxter, or a John Deere tractor.

5) Look your son in the eyes;
By making eye contact as you speak, you show him that you are listening and paying attention to him, and valuing him as a person. It will make him feel good about talking and increase his confidence.

6) Model correct language;
It’s normal for children to make over-generalisation ‘mistakes’ like “I putted it away.” That just goes to show he’s working things out and unconsciously making up rules. Being corrected doesn’t feel good. Hearing “I put it away” many times from others will make him discover the correct past tense for ‘put’ for himself, a much more powerful way of learning!

7) Read to your child;
An obvious but important tip. You can make this even more enjoyable for your child by showing you enjoy it, for instance by ‘getting into role,’ using different voices for different characters, or using singsong.

Of course these tips are equally useful for girls, but boys in the UK seem to lag behind girls, at least in government tests, so I hope you enjoy these activities and help your child at the same time, especially if you’re a dad!

Every year Peter Shayler brings his Fun Fair to the Southwater community to bring happiness and amusement to the children and families. This year, for the first time, they set up just outside our nursery.

For two days the children kept an eye on the fairground being constructed and marvelled at the big machines going up up. We were delighted to be invited for a special visit and the sense of anticipation grew steadily throughout the week. Finally, this morning, we set off just after a rain shower. The children were treated to a ride on the old fashioned transport caroussel straight away and loved it. Then they all enjoyed a drink together before a second go in another vehicle on the caroussel. Next Mr Shayler opened up the control box at the centre of the ride to give the children a chance to see the inner workings. Their final ride was enjoyed with confident and enthusiastic cries of excitement. A happy bunch of children and helpers returned to school and home for lunch. The weather stayed dry and even sunny all the way through.

Thank you so much Peter and Gail from Shayler’s Amusements,
we hope you’ll be back next year:)

Thea and the team at Southwater Montessori.

. . . and this time it wasn’t at Southwater. Southwater Montessori was inspected on June 22nd this year. We got a ‘satisfactory’ rating on ‘the effectiveness of partnerships’ and a ‘good’ rating on all other sixteen counts. That made the overall rating clearly ‘good.’ Since then we have organised a number of parent partnership events and parents are rallying ’round to support us in our efforts to secure Easteds Barn (or an alternative) as a future venue. Further initiatives are being planned.

There is a link to the Southwater report on our website and this is a direct link to the report on the Ofsted site:

http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/oxcare_reports/display/(id)/281773

The year before, we were visited by a Montessori Quality Accreditation Assessor and we became the first school to achieve Montessori Quality Accreditation in West Sussex. There is a link to this report, for both Horsham and Southwater, from the top of our home page on our website: http://www.montessori-uk.co.uk

Last week it was Horsham Montessori’s turn to be inspected and we are very happy with Horsham’s results as well, as they achieved a ‘good’ rating again, and scored ‘good’ on all seventeen counts! Parents may not be aware that Ofsted do not give us prior warning of their inpsections. They just ‘turn up’ on the day! Horsham was accredited for Montessori Quality in July 2009, on the same date as the Montessori School in Worthing. We are very happy and grateful that, as an organisation, we can offer children access to two out of only three Montessori accredited schools in West Sussex (out of a total of eighteen West Sussex Montessori schools). Thanks to government funding many children attend our Montessori schools free of charge. It is also thanks to government funding that the Horsham children now benefit from brand new beautiful furniture and new decking outside. This must have played its part in the good results. We look forward to making similar improvements in Southwater too!

The Southwater team had worked extremely hard to get the classroom and the outdoor area ready for the event. For most of them this was after a full day’s work. Many parents helped out with drinks and food. A special thank you is due to Tim, who took responsibility for prepearing the BBQ setup, and for Maureen, who did lots of preparation and helping. They were not the only helpers! The other special thank you is for Lyndsay, of www.theshutterbugfamily.com (password-protected), who took brilliant photos and brought Steve along to record brief interviews with parents and children at the event.

It would be great if mums & dads could pass on my thanks to the children, who were so delightful and clearly so much enjoyed having all their friends and parents there.

Thank you all!

“If you can conceive it, and you can believe it, you can achieve it!” (Napoleon Hill).

I believe those wise words were true, and remain so today. Napoleon Hill continues to inspire people to reach for their dreams. Give a dream a deadline and it becomes a vision. Put a vision into action and it becomes reality. Everything starts in our imagination.
So let’s imagine that we find a new home for the school in the next year, and let’s make it a great one.
I invite you all to contribute ideas to the list below, and to keep your eyes & ears open for any possible openings in or around the village. We are committed to providing a quality Montessori early years setting for your children!
Here’s the list of the possible action points we discussed at last week’s meeting:

Action Plan Southwater

1) Locate to a different site

Actions

• Make enquiries about local buildings that are of a sufficient size and have parking;
• Enquire about dis-used or under-used commercial or residential buildings;
• Register at Estate Agents for the possibility of large homes, spare barns, disused farm or industrial buildings or any new builds;
• Enquire re local land available for a new build (temporary classrooms easy to get);

2) Start a “ Save Our Nursery Campaign”

Actions

• Set up Facebook Campaign to include past and present parents (Dawn?);
• Set up a campaign website (Thank you Tim!)
• Make banners for outside property and ask for banner to be displayed on roundabout;
• See if we can ‘adopt a roundabout;’
• Ask parents if they will issue a statement;
• Appeal against decision on Easteds Barn;
• Put our point of view across in County Times and/or The Resident, etc;
• o Talk to Fletcher Trust;
• o Talk to Southwater Parish Council;

3) Be More Visual and Personal in the Community.

Actions

• Advertise the benefits we offer:
  • flexibility;
  • open 8 to 6 all year round (50 weeks) including school holidays;
  • Montessori Quality accredited;
  • good Ofsted rating (June 2010);
  • graduate leadership;
  • beautiful outdoor area;
  • accept full range of tax credit voucher schemes,
  • flexibility in how we offer Free Entitlement;
  • possible to get Montessori education completely free of charge (with government funding);
  • able to cater for older children (up to age 8, helpful during school holidays), etc;
• Attend Village events and fairs;
• Advertise in the local Doctors’ Surgery, Nursery and Library;
• Hold a Montessori Playgroup morning;
• Hold a Sports Day;
• Distribute flyers/leaflets (parents have offered help creating and distributing);
• On Southwater Bonfire night leaflet the gate (maybe sponsor);
• Hold a leavers’ picnic/BBBQ in the evening of July 22nd, 5:30pm- 7:30pm, sell tickets at 50p each (food included), also hold a raffle & invite reporters from WSCT & The Resident;
• Have a stall at the October Blackberry fair at Castlewood;
• Take part in Christmas Fayre in December;
• Post information on Horsham Forum/Southwater Forum;
• Have displays by children (library?), sell cakes and display leaflets.

This is my very first blog, very exciting and a bit scary for me! I’m very grateful to Tim (Tom & Alfie’s dad) for setting this up.

The intention is to gather our community together on-line to find a way to deal with our premises challenge. Our lease in Southwater runs out in October 2011 and we’ve been told it won’t be renewed. We were offered Easteds Barn as an alternative venue, as its use (and revenues) have steadily declined over the last five years.

Horsham District Council recommended approval but some of the local residents organised an effective campaign, for now.

One argument was in the numbers: 140 community users against 35 children. However, numbers can be presented in different ways: 140 users using 15 hours per week, or 35 children, 10 teachers and 70 parents (totalling 115 people) using 50 hours per week, for instance. Another argument was that we were a business, as if that in itself was a bad thing. In the black & white past business was for making money and government and charities were there to help the poor, things have moved on. My coach puts it thus:

“On a bigger scale where we’ve come from is a place where business focussed on making money (and unfortunately not always in good ways) and taxes and gifts were made to government and charities to do good things to restore the balance. The new wave of social entrepreneurs are finding ways of doing good things in profitable ways. This opens possibilities. And potentially leads to greater overall health.”

I couldn’t agree more.

If you any ideas or suggestions, or would simply like us to know your opinion about our campaign, please feel free to comment here. We’d love to know your views and feelings!