Vitamin N

Recently, Richard Louv has written some of the most important books for parents and educators about the link between self-regulation, happiness, and success (in a holistic sense) and nature for children: Last Child in the Woods -- Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder, The Nature Principle, and his newest (released in April 2016) Vitamin N. Vitamin N is Nature, the ingredient so crucial for children to become competent, independent, and self-realized beings by integrating their physical, spiritual, emotional, and social needs in an environment where they are free of interference from adults.

I cherish and feel grateful for the existence of a natural space not one mile from our school where my students and I venture several times per year -- at least once per season -- to develop Vitamin N and nurture our spirits. We do this through free play in the forest environment, constructing (and often deconstructing) a fort made from a fallen tree. In this same area, past classes of mine have also learned about the necessity of the canopy -- the mixed age trees which mirror the mixed-age Montessori classroom -- for the survival of all biological life in the woods. Like the forest, we need all of our skills and difficulties in order to be the dynamic class that we are.

Each child receives her own tree under which she can see the world existing in its own rhythm and growing at its own pace, just as children do.

Students take their journals to a space that belongs only to one child at a time -- the nearest being ten to twenty feet away -- and soak in the environment through writing and art, sometimes using dirt or leaves to color their drawings. They write about what comes to mind about the natural world, and how the world entered their senses.

They touch nature, and by doing so, they return to themselves. This is what Maria Montessori envisioned with her Erdkinder program, and it is also how we maintain an authentic and impactful Montessori education. Louv cites Martha Farrell Erickson -- developmental psychologist and author of Together in Nature: Shared Nature Experience as a Pathway to Strong Family Bonds -- who advises parents and children to unplug from technology to create "an opportunity for ... affective sharing" to impact a child's lifelong development. Children need nature and a nurturing connection to their loved ones more than they need social isolation via electronic devices.

Here is a brief sampling of ideas for how to increase your child's intake of Vitamin N (Nature):

• Put nature on the calendar -- just as you would schedule vacations or sporting events.
• Think of nature as enrichment time -- not just after school classes, music lessons, and summer camp.
• Turn your commute into a nature safari -- play I Spy with cloud formations, trees, and wildlife. Read signposts for land, water, and sky. Better yet, walk to school once per week, if you live close enough.
• Play hooky -- take a day off work and let your teacher know you and your child will spend the day in the natural world re-connecting. Your child might take photos to share with classmates upon her return!
• Stash a G.O. (Go Outside) bag in your car -- with compass, binoculars, water bottle, and hiking shoes -- so your family can be spontaneous and Go Outside at a moment's notice.
• Recognize that boredom isn't a negative -- a child remembers best the unexpected adventure of the natural world.
• Be the guide on the side -- ask questions of your child to elicit her logic and imagination, and resist the adult desire to control by answering these questions. This empowers your child and models curiosity over expertise.
• Stay up late on Friday and Saturday night, and study the constellations. Your child may already know the ancient stories in the stars.
• Paint with mud or leaves.
• Press flowers between the pages of a heavy coffee table book you rarely open, using wax paper to protect your book.
• Build a rock cairn.
• Let kids take appropriate risks (walking on logs, for example) to build confidence, gross motor control, and resilience.

Spiritual Awakening in Nature

At my school, we are very fortunate to be within walking distance of a local park and natural area. Within twenty minutes, we can walk together through residential neighborhoods to a public space that has nature trails, playground, a forest (where students have planted young evergreens to help develop the canopy), and a large grassy area.

Students can connect with their primal instincts in the wooded area, building forts or playing with sticks. We also enjoy hiking deep into the nature trails to find a quiet spot for each child to sit, observe, reflect, and write in his/her journal about what it feels like to be alone in nature. This experience is spiritually uplifting for young children, whose lives may be very structured.

Richard Louv has written extensively about “nature deficit disorder” – the myriad ways in which modern children enjoy increasingly less time outdoors, engaged in “free play” of their own devising. These images capture the necessity of such time better than I could ever describe!

More Free Play, Less Pressure, and Fewer Screens

Cosmologist Brian Swimme's latest book Journey of the Universe explains about young people, that “what often occupies their consciousness is play. They leap and twist; they explore the world with their eyes; they taste the world with their mouths; they enter into many kinds of relationships out of sheer curiosity. With their play, they are discovering the exuberance of being alive.” (p. 85) This observation resounded with me during parent-teacher conferences, when several parents said that their children experienced a positive change when their lives were less managed and they were allowed more free time to play.

Parents often express concern over such issues as their child's academic progress, time management, motivation, and social behavior. There is a fine line between adult guidance of a child and imposition of will upon him/her. Maria Montessori identified a teacher’s purpose: "to aid life, leaving it free, however, to unfold itself." Some parents ask what they should do at home to reinforce expectations at school, whether they should withhold extracurricular activities such as swimming or at-home play until their child performs the desired behavior. My consistent suggestion is to support the child wherever s/he is in his/her development and to avoid adding any pressure in the manner of rewards and punishments. It is relieving to hear so many parents validate how this approach of loving support benefits children's confidence, independence, and internal motivation. (PLAY Brown's TED talk on the subject below!)

In my daily interactions with students over the past decade, I have observed that children respond to respect, guidance, honesty, and flexibility. Montessori famously said, "The prize and punishments are incentives toward unnatural or forced effort, and therefore we certainly cannot speak of the natural development of the child in connection with them." Parents experiment with approaches, and some try to externally motivate their child with points, purchases, even food – soon discovering that their child no longer cares as much about what they are learning as with the carrot at the end of the parental stick. External motivation nearly always backfires, engendering resentment in the heart of the child, who understands very quickly that s/he isn’t trusted with his/her own education.

The crucial impact of play on the emotional, social, and cognitive development of children is described in the 2009 book Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul by Stuart Brown. A medical doctor, psychiatrist, and clinical researcher, Brown discusses how experts “from every point of the scientific compass now know that play is a profound biological process… It shapes the brain and makes animals smarter and more adaptable… it fosters empathy and makes possible complex social groups. For us, play lies at the core of creativity and innovation.” (p. 4-5) Despite this fact, children in many families learn -- from example -- that play is valued less than work and that work life blurs into private time without consideration for our emotional and spiritual needs.

Brown explains, “At some point, as we get older… we are made to feel guilty for playing. We are told that it is unproductive, a waste of time… The play that remains is, like league sports, mostly very organized, rigid, and competitive… The beneficial effects of… true play can spread through our lives, actually making us more productive and happier in everything we do.” (p. 6-7) Brown identifies seven properties of play: 

• “apparently purposeless (done for its own sake),
• voluntary,
• inherent attraction,
• freedom from time, 
• diminished consciousness of self, 
• improvisational potential, 
• and continuation desire… 

We are fully in the moment, in the zone. We are experiencing what the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihaly calls ‘flow’.” (p. 17) It is this flow that parents hope their children will experience when they send them to Montessori school, yet this same priority must also be consistently maintained at home. (PLAY Csikszentmihaly's TED talk below!)

Brown cites renowned Washington State University play researcher Jaak Panksepp, who has found that “active play selectively stimulates brain-derived neurotrophic factor (which stimulates nerve growth) in the amygdala (where emotions get processed) and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (where executive decisions are processed).” (p. 33) Just as author Richard Louv coined the phrase “nature deficit” in children lacking contract with the outdoors, Brown notes a “ play deficit much like the well-documented sleep deficit”. (p. 43) He warns that "the threat to play is even greater than it was a generation or more ago… Kids today are spending too much of their time on video games… and the parentally organized, high expectation trip to the soccer field at age six… Schools have evolved into assembly lines for high test scores, where skills are drilled… Something is lost – perhaps unfettered imagination and freedom.” (p. 79) Free play is nearly extinct, except in half-hour allotments of recess.

Brown asserts that “movement structures our knowledge of the world, space, time, and our relationship to others… Movement play lights up the brain and fosters learning, innovation, flexibility, adaptability, and resilience... which are required for the emergence of fluent human language.” Especially relevant to Montessori classrooms, Brown describes how “object play with the hands creates a brain that is better suited for understanding and solving problems of all sorts.” Imaginative play “remains the key to emotional resilience and creativity… developing empathy, understanding, and trust of others, as well as personal coping skills.” (p. 84-87) For many students, their school day begins at seven in the morning and ends at six in the evening with after-school care. Many have multiple evening and weekend "enrichment" activities, with very little free play time for themselves. As I have seen on many occasions that children seem afraid of nature and don't know how to enter it nor enjoy its wonder.

“We may think we are helping to prepare our kids for the future when we organize all their time, when we continually ferry them from one adult-organized, adult-regulated activity to another," Brown suggests. "In fact, we may be taking from them the time they need to discover for themselves their most vital talents and knowledge… access to an inner motivation for an activity that will later blossom into a motive force of life.” Not long ago, Brown reminds us, “self-organized play was all kids did” and warns that if children are deprived of free play, “they will find their own new ways of asserting their own community, socialization patterns, and individuality… creating their own private play zone where they … socialize freely.” (p. 105-108). Brown points to the advent of texting, juvenile cell phone use, and online communities as examples of the new locations of children's privacy, in the absence of a back wood. Children are often left to their own devices, literally: an iPad, Wii, or YouTube. 

Screen play concerns Brown because it can “isolate people from real-world, human interactions that are an essential part of psychological health… The storyline is set by the box, and the kids are now merely along for the ride, motionless and mute… In the real world, the kind of emotional arousal that these screens and games produce is discharged through physical activity” without which “kids can become antsy and unfocused”. Screen play neglects “a deep human need to interact with the material world: to feel the tug of gravity, to physically move through the dimensions of space and time, to feel the physical resistance of solid objects.” Applicable to Montessori classrooms, Brown notes that “the use of the hands to manipulate three-dimensional objects is an essential part of brain development.” (p. 183-185) From a century ago, Montessori echoes Brown: "Movement, or physical activity, is thus an essential factor in intellectual growth, which depends upon the impressions received from outside. Through movement we come in contact with external reality, and it is through these contacts that we eventually acquire abstract ideas."

Montessori's observation -- that “work normalizes the child” – is also Brown’s advice: “The quality that work and play have in common is creativity. In both we are building our world, creating new relationships… Play is called recreation because it makes us new again.” It is “nature’s greatest tool for creating new neural networks and for reconciling cognitive difficulties.” (p. 127-128) So many Montessori materials appear to children as learning games: the stamp game, the checkerboard, the test tubes. Montessori students view education as play, because materials are ordered, thoughtful, beautiful, tactile, and fun!

Still, parents worry that their child may somehow fall behind others. Many parents show interest in test scores and would like to know where their child places amongst his/her peers. Quantitative, competitive measures are incompatible with the Montessori philosophy that each child grows at his/her own rate, learns by using  concrete materials, and values emotional and spiritual development as much as intellectual or social behavior. The latter two are easily determined, while the former involve understanding of and compassion for a child's uniqueness. Montessori believed that "when dealing with children, there is greater need for observing than of probing." 

No child will be left behind when each child is respected. Brown reminds us that “people reach the highest levels of a discipline because they are driven by love, by fun, by play.” (p. 143) Chore charts and stars have no place in a respectful relationship between child and adult. Brown adds, “The acquisition of good grades or a big bonus, if not connected to the heart of life, is dispiriting, even if accolades accrue.” (p. 145) Seeking parental approval is on par with fear of parent disappointment. I am so proud to work at a school that provides open, proactive communication with parents, as well as vivid, qualitative narratives to describe a child better than any number or letter. 

Brown's advice to parents is succinct: more free play, less pressure, fewer screens. “Nature, with all its novelties and the play emotions stirred by its wonders, gets through to kids if the immersion can be tailored to fit their temperament and natural curiosity.” (p. 204) Parents are amazed to see their child's temperament, interests, self-esteem, and joy after an hour of free time in an open field. Children have the rest of their lives to live like adults; they only have one childhood. Let them go outside!

Nourishing the Intellect in Nature

On a recent field trip to Full Circle Farm in Carnation, Washington, my class of 6-9-year-olds had a special experience in nature. Throughout the month of September, we had been studying the changing seasons, sketching farm animals, reading books about food, and had even taken our families to a local farmer's market to see the produce up-close. On our field trip -- which was free -- we wore mud boots so we could get dirty and explored the farm with a volunteer guide. We examined various seeds that are stored in the barn and smelled various geraniums with amazing perfumes (lemon balm, pepper, tomato) in the greenhouse where seeds flourish into plants. We also visited the manure-to-compost heap, saw the vintage farm equipment this local farm buys used as a form of recycling, and snacked on carrots from the field and blueberries off the vine. Although this farm is within thirty minutes of our school, this event was many students' first foray onto a farm where organic food is grown in a sustainable way.

I was reminded of Richard Louv's term "nature-deficit disorder". Children at first felt inhibited to splash in puddles, wary of dirtying their clothes, and they learned that some bacteria (among the oldest and earliest forms of life on the planet) are actually good for you, that they fight sickness created by "bad" bacteria. A parent mentioned that her child is reading voraciously this year, since television viewing was decreased. So many things that impact all of our lives end up seeming very simple. The more in-touch we are with hands-on materials, the more focus, concentration, and enjoyment we experience. Technology has much to offer us, yet we benefit from maintaining equal time with low-mechanized or even manual processes: peeling a potato, holding a door for another person, or turning a page.

In Richard Louv's two books on the subject of nature-deficit disorder, Last Child in the Woods and The Nature Principle, the author does not oppose technology yet reminds readers that the more technology we introduce and use in our lives, the more nature we need to bring about balance. Even a small amount of time outdoors positively affects children whose connection to the environment has been negatively impacted by increasingly sedentary or (conversely) over-structured lifestyles.

Fundamental aspects of Montessori education parallel recent scientific studies on the optimal ways we learn: 

• through hands-on contact with natural materials
• by going out into the world to freely experience (not simply research)
• in communion with others
• through noticing inter-connections between all life forms
• in honoring our whole selves -- intellect, emotions, body, sense of wonder, need for company
• and by finding peace at our own pace. 

Here are some suggestions for restoring a child's connection to nature:

• Walking, journaling, and engaging in imaginative play outdoors -- with or without others -- may bring a child inner peace and joy or provide centering instead of over-stimulation.
• Those who are naturally creative and imaginative may enjoy sketching or watercolor, which also strengthen fine motor skills.
• Climbing trees, building forts, or relays may allow a child to develop unknown sources of physical strength.
• Those who grapple with hypersensitivity or defensiveness may benefit from spending more time outside in order to release frustrations and find peace when compromise is necessary.
• Time spent with friends and loved ones in nature settings may help a child feel more secure, allow him/her to take risks and try new things, and develop courage and confidence.
• Many active children find that running or jumping rope helps them corral their energy and focus better indoors, as well as provides them with a break between periods of deep concentration.
• Shy or reticent children may benefit from oral storytelling which inspires the senses and stimulates conversation.
• Gardening may help children connect to others and the natural world, refine their auditory and visual senses, and enhance observance of their surroundings.
• Collective excursions  -- especially hiking, camping, or adventuring -- allow children to express themselves more openly to others, build self-esteem, and hone gross motor coordination.

Quality time spent with one another, rather than distracted by convenience and electronics, brings us closer and helps us feel that we belong. In PE activities, we sometimes use a colorful parachute to encourage community-building. Other times, we walk a fabric labyrinth to experience focus, patience, and mindfulness while also practicing gross motor balance. We should always go out into nature, not only during "good weather". We learn so much from returning to the same places throughout the year, noticing seasonal changes, and appreciating the cycle of life.

Honoring the Physical Aspect of the 6-9 Child

Most forms of education focus primarily on the intellectual, but education is not limited to math, language, and cultural studies. It also encompasses an education of the senses, which in Montessori education includes art, fine motor (such as pouring, drawing, and writing), and gross motor development. Physical education evolves through freedom of movement, exploration of nature, fitness, and hand-eye coordination. As Montessori said, “Since it is through movement that the will realizes itself, we should assist a child in his attempts to put his will into action.”

Physically, the 6-9 child has longer limbs and strong muscles, is more resistant to disease, and shows a fascination with anatomy and all kinds of bodily functions, noises, and/or scatological jokes.  The Montessori environment appears most different from traditional educational settings in its physical dimension. Visitors notice that students move freely, often engaging in individual or partner work, rather than all students facing a teacher. 

Maria Montessori, a scientist trained in observation, revolutionized educational practices in the early 20th century when she announced, "free choice is one of the highest of all the mental processes." She quickly clarified in her involvement with street children of Rome, Italy, "To give a child liberty is not to abandon him to himself… To let the child do as he likes when he has not yet developed any powers of control is to betray the idea of freedom…The essence of independence is to be able to do something for one’s self." Freedom within limits, choice within order, and exploration within sequence are core to the Montessori method, yet above all exists respect for the child.

Prior to Montessori, education in America was heavily influenced by John Dewey, who modeled learning after industrial mass production.  Sadly, even now in the early 21st century, public education is dominated by a business model that treats children like products. Maria Montessori was ahead of her time in valuing the child as a source of inspiration, not simply a by-product of testing.  Montessori observed a child's need for physical contact with materials in exploration. As Montessori said so eloquently, "If teaching is to be effective with young children, it must assist ... independence… activities which they can perform themselves ... Any child who is self-sufficient... reflects in his joy and sense of achievement the image of human dignity, which is derived from a sense of independence.

The 6-9 child has an enhanced sense of personal space and spatial relationships. Montessori classrooms are tailored to the physical development of the child.  Shelves, desks, and materials are at a child’s level, and freedom of movement is incorporated to refine gross and fine motor skills and respect the child’s desire to have physical control over objects.  Materials are sequential, organized, attractive, and accessible to the child. One of the main tenets of Montessori education is the prepared environment and teacher as guide. As Maria Montessori said, "The environment must ... lend interest to activity and invite the child to conduct his own experiences...Education is a natural process carried out by the human individual and is acquired not by listening to words, but by experiences in the environment."  

Montessori also said, "No social problem is as universal as the oppression of the child." What other education reformer has ever been so on the side of the child as Maria Montessori? She pre-saged our modern predicament where the activity level of children becomes an issue of control for adults. In Montessori classrooms, the power center of the adult is transformed to the individual and the community, each respecting one another through the physical realm. Montessori education values, among other things, the physical life of the child. In traditional classrooms, children are confined to chairs and desks to engage in simultaneous activities under the supervision of a teacher. In a Montessori classroom, as Montessori herself described, “the environment itself will teach the child, if every error he makes is manifest to him, without the intervention of a parent or teacher, who should remain a quiet observer of all that happens.” 

How is this possible? As a scientist, Montessori followed the scientific method of observation, hypothesis, and experiment. Her values were the same as those of current Montessorians: environment, independence, and experience. They work together in many capacities, for example: at PE, lifting a parachute together.

The prepared environment allows students optimum freedom of movement through sequential organization of materials which are self-correcting, enhancing the child's independence. In addition, students frequently arrange materials at rugs on the floor. At Eton, on one of the first days of school, students attend a rules assembly that illuminates ways in which the physical aspect of the child is honored: interdependence of mind and body, respect and care for the body, refining and strengthening physical skills, and purposeful movement. As Montessori said, “Seemingly simple acts of unrolling a rug, carrying a work on a tray, keeping all material within a space, and replacing items at the end of a work are practices not only in diligence but in coordination and concentration… We must, therefore, quit our roles as jailers and instead take care to prepare an environment in which we do as little as possible to exhaust the child with our surveillance and instruction.”

Independence is key to the 6-9 child’s development, however independence does not mean unlimited freedom. Lower elementary students use work plans in addition to sequential materials, in order to hone time management skills. They are in charge of their learning, what Montessori called “auto-education”: “The child, in fact, once he feels sure of himself, will no longer seek the approval of authority after every step.” Many materials (such as rugs, scales, and pattern blocks) encourage fine and gross motor development. Students learn to listen to their bodies and have snack when their bodies require it. Children no longer ask, “May I have snack?”  They have placemats and know how to wash their hands.

Working, interacting, and eating are personal experiences. A prepared environment is scaffolding for self-determination learned through independence and strengthened through experience. Maria Montessori understood over a century ago that “growth comes from activity, not from intellectual understanding.” Montessori education is not memorized knowledge but respect for all aspects of a person: intellectual, emotional, social, spiritual, and physical.  Montessori charged us to “respect all the reasonable forms of activity in which the child engages and try to understand them… Watching a child makes it obvious that the development of his mind comes through his movement.”

Current educational and scientific research corroborates Maria Montessori’s hundred-year-old vision, as author Richard Louv explains in his book Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. Louv notices that “within the space of a few decades, the way children understand and experience nature has changed radically…Today, kids are aware of the global threats to the environment—but their physical contact, their intimacy with nature, is fading.” Louv connects avoidance of direct experience in nature with a societal sense of doom for forests and deserts, oceans and lakes which previously evoked joy and solitude. Students plant herbs and weed in gardens, have lessons in the outdoor habitat, and run free at recess and during PE under evergreen trees that reach a hundred feet in the air. 

Without this daily contact with the natural environment, Louv warns, “the young spend less and less of their lives in natural surroundings, their senses narrow, physiologically and psychologically, and this reduces the richness of human experience.” Louv calls this modern phenomenon “nature deficit disorder,” a term seemingly in-line with common diagnoses for those whose energies would benefit from both freedom and structure. Louv reminds us, “Thoughtful exposure of youngsters to nature can even be a powerful form of therapy for attention-deficit disorders and other maladies. As one scientist puts it, we can now assume that just as children need good nutrition and adequate sleep, they may very well need contact with nature.”