Albany Montessori Nursery Blog
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Sure. Albany Montessori Nursery is a nursery school in St Albans, Hertfordshire, England. It follows the Montessori method of education, which is a child-centered approach that emphasizes independence, self-directed learning, and respect for the child's natural development.
Albany Montessori Nursery Blog
1y ago
Every autumn term as the days begin to draw in and the weather begins to turn conkers fall to the ground. They do so silently and sparingly at first and their numbers begin to steadily increase till the bounty is plenty and all the children enjoy filling their pockets! I am delighted to report that the children are no exception to this. On our outings to the park they have developed keen eyes and are great at scanning the ground for any conker they can find. For those that walk they pick up conkers, and also pine cones en-route and small rivalries develop as they show-off their finds as they g ..read more
Albany Montessori Nursery Blog
1y ago
So week two done and all goes well in the land of Albany! Our lovely new children are settling in well and getting used to the routines, and the returning children are adjusting to the new class with some of their old friends having flown our nest. There are always interesting patterns in settling in and returning, and over the years, they have established themselves. It is something that I feel may help in sharing.
First our new starters: some dive in head first, are beautifully curious and, initially, there is no looking back. Then it becomes routine and there are some tears and a little pr ..read more
Albany Montessori Nursery Blog
1y ago
Excitingly for the children this first week was the discovery of our new garden which runs down the side of our building. In reality the garden space has always been there however there were restrictions on using it. That all changed following a conversation with our landlord earlier this summer when he said something along the lines of, ‘Oh Fawzia if you would like to then you can.’ Hooray! Wonderfully he gave us carte blanche to do as we wished as his sea cadets no longer camped there - really they have not camped there for many years and the space has been overgrown with bramble ..read more
Albany Montessori Nursery Blog
1y ago
Childcare, day-care, pre-schools, nursery schools, all have one thing that is central to their being – to look after children! From there on in they can vary in what they do, how they do it, the culture, the ethos, the routines, the discipline, the character of their classrooms and the backdrop of their settings.
In Montessori classrooms, the founding lady herself, Maria Montessori, made it quite clear that children were best taught in mixed age groups. The reasoning behind she felt was integral to the children developing a sense of ‘community’ and ‘cooperation.’ I love that the e ..read more
Albany Montessori Nursery Blog
1y ago
When I was younger, and even to this day, I have always placed Shrove Tuesday into the context of raiding and emptying the cupboards of flour, milk, sugar and eggs and feasting on pancakes ahead of a period (for some) of fasting and abstinence which is Lent. I didn’t really think too much about how the association of pancakes with this religious observance was a later date add-on, as really I was just being swept along by the food! However in pausing for thought what you get is that it is highly unlikely that Jesus and the disciples had pancakes in their repertoire of foods.
So having done a ..read more
Albany Montessori Nursery Blog
1y ago
Happy New Year of the tiger!
This past week we have enjoyed celebrating Chinese New Year and this has brought with it some lovely moments.
We learned about the race to establish how the new year became named after each animals and then read and discussed how chinese new year is celebrated.
After reading the story of all the animals arguing, and subsequently having a race across the river to decide upon which animal would have the new year named after them, one child told me, ‘Well Fawzia, my sisters and I argue and then we all had a race and splashed in the bath, and the order is ..read more
Albany Montessori Nursery Blog
1y ago
First of all Happy New Year to everyone out there! As we make new years resolutions and think of ways in which we can enrich our lives I have one to ponder on, namely utopian thinking.
I make no bones about the fact that this is a curious one. However, the other day I was, driven by my daughter, to read about utopian thinking, and not only was it insightful but it did get me thinking that utopian thinking is healthy.
The idea of utopia stems from Thomas More’s book ‘Utopia’ in which there is a society which live in harmony, and utopian thinking is the mindset in which we reflect on soc ..read more
Albany Montessori Nursery Blog
1y ago
This time of year the highlight is always the Nativity.
What is so lovely is the journey from start to finish. We begin after the half term and it is very early days and December seems quite distant. It seems almost wrong to be wishing the time away singing We wish you a merry Christmas at the beginning of November.
Indeed the journey we all take can be likened to the famous one when Mary, Joseph, and the donkey travelled towards Bethlehem. One step after another they got there.
When we start the children are not familiar with the story or the songs and gradually, as time goes on, the ..read more
Albany Montessori Nursery Blog
1y ago
I have been recently reading one of Maria Montessori’s London lectures (from 1946) entitled Spontaneous Activity. It’s an interesting read in which she makes it clear that children have an innate compulsion to learn and be able to do things for themselves. She observed that this is exemplified in all sorts of curious behaviours; the first of these behaviours is achieved with the hands. Montessori said, ’We should remember that the child used and exercised his hands before he began to use his feet.’ Consequently we need to give little hands opportunities to learn.
In the Montessori pedagogy pr ..read more