Apple Green Montessori Preschool

Best coach around!

⚽ Did you know that before a child can master a football skill, they first need to master their own body?!

At Star AthElites FC, every session is built around FUNdamental movements — running, stoping, jumping, balancing, and coordination — because these are the building blocks of everything that comes after. 🦁
When your little one is chasing a ball, hopping over cones, or taking that big penalty kick, they're not just getting involved with football, they're developing skills that will benefit them for life. ⭐
That's what makes Star AthElites FC different, we help Develop More Than Just Footballers. 💚

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At Star AthElites FC, every session is built around FUNdamental movements — running, stopping, jumping, balancing, and coordination — because these are the building blocks of everything that comes after. 🦁

Our beautiful garden at Stanstead Abbotts

Spread the word 💚🍏

For more info email: [email protected]

💰 Free Childcare Isn’t Free - And Our Children Are Paying the Price. 💰

Over the last couple of days, newspapers and social posts have been telling parents:

“You don’t have to pay the extra charges for childcare.”

We completely understand why that message lands. Families are under pressure. Every pound matters.

But here’s what those headlines are missing - and it’s important.

“Free” childcare isn’t fully funded - The Government sets an hourly rate for funded places, but that rate often doesn’t cover the real cost of delivering high-quality early years care.

Staff wages. Rent. Energy bills. Food. Training. Insurance. Resources.

All rising. All essential. All real.

When the funding falls short, that gap doesn’t magically disappear, it’s absorbed by nurseries and childminders. This means providers are quietly subsidising funded hours from their own pockets.

The sector simply can’t keep doing that.

Childcare across the country is on its knees. Settings are reducing places, leaving the funded schemes, or closing their doors entirely.

If parents opt out of every additional charge while funding stays the same, the result isn’t cheaper childcare… It’s less childcare. 🤷🏻‍♀️

❌ Fewer nurseries.
❌ Fewer childminders.
❌ Longer waiting lists.
❌ Parents unable to return to work.

That helps no one.

And when income is squeezed, it’s the children who feel it first.

High-quality early years provision isn’t just about keeping doors open - it’s about enriching experiences: inspiring resources, exciting activities, outdoor learning, special visitors, trips, and highly trained staff who have the time to truly nurture each child.

When funding doesn’t stretch, those opportunities become harder to sustain. Not because providers don’t care, but because the money simply isn’t there.

💚 Children deserve more than the bare minimum.

They deserve environments where curiosity is sparked, confidence is built, and every child can thrive.

This isn’t about profit. It’s about survival.

At Kayte’s House, we exist because we love supporting children and families. We believe in accessible childcare. We want funded hours to work - we really, honestly do!

But the current system only works because providers stretch themselves - financially and emotionally - to breaking point.

So here’s our message to Government:

✅ Fund childcare properly.

✅ Match funding rates to real-world costs.

✅ Stop pushing providers into impossible positions.

✅ Stop pitting parents against providers

Because parents shouldn’t have to worry, and early years settings shouldn’t have to operate at a loss just to stay open.

✨ Sustainable funding = stable childcare = secure families. ✨

That’s what we’re fighting for. 💪🏽

💚

This ⬇️

What was—and what must be true to her legacy and the legacy of those true Elders, Montessori, Steiner, Malaguzzi, Mason

The old paradigm was clear: the child enters school as an empty vessel.
The adult knows; the child does not.
The teacher pours knowledge in measured doses.
The child sits, receives, repeats, performs, is judged.
School was preparation for a world of hierarchy, obedience, competition.
The child was shaped to fit the system.

Dr Maria Montessori dared to declare the opposite.
She proclaimed a radical reversal—a paradigm shift born of scientific observation, spiritual insight, and unshakable reverence for childhood:

The child is not empty.
The child arrives already full—full of an absorbent mind, an inner guide, sensitive periods, an innate drive toward order, independence, and harmony.
The adult’s role is not to fill, but to prepare the ground, remove obstacles, offer beauty and freedom, then step back in humble service.
School is not a factory of conformity; it is a living environment where the child’s own activity constructs the adult they will become.

This shift is not gentle reform.
It is revolution: from adult-centered to child-centered, from imposition to invitation, from external control to inner discipline, from competition to cooperation, from fragmentation to cosmic vision.

What must be true to honor her legacy today is fidelity to that same reversal.
We cannot claim her name while clinging to old habits—of rushing the child, standardizing the soul, measuring worth by test scores, filling every silence with adult voice, treating concentration as interruption rather than sacrament.

To be true to the legacy of Dr Montessori means:
Trusting the child’s inner guide above any adult timetable.
Preparing environments of exquisite order, beauty, and freedom within limits.
Protecting long, uninterrupted work cycles as sacred.
Seeing silence not as discipline, but as the fertile soil of peace and self-discovery.
Allowing practical life to become the foundation of responsibility and grace.
Honoring sensitive periods as divine appointments.
Walking beside the child—not ahead, not behind, but in deep respect, as co-worker in the unfolding of humanity.

Only when we live this shift do her final words from the grave in Noordwijk breathe again:
“I beg the dear, all-powerful children to join me in creating peace in man and in the world.”

Children Leave Their Homes Every Day to Attend “A Kind of School”
(with reverence, in the words of Maya Angelou, Mother Teresa, and Maria Montessori)

Every morning, children step from the warmth of home—the gentle routines, the loving gaze, the unconditional embrace—and cross the threshold into a kind of school.

What is school?
In too many places, it remains anchored in the old paradigm: bells dividing time, desks aligned toward authority, knowledge dispensed in uniform portions, worth measured by performance and comparison. The child is asked to absorb, conform, compete—shaped for a future that often prioritizes output over soul.

Maria Montessori beheld the child with the eyes of the new paradigm.
She saw not a blank slate to be written upon, but a spiritual being, a sacred embryo endowed with an absorbent mind, an inner guide, and an innate impulse toward growth, harmony, and peace. She crafted a kind of school that honors this mystery—one where the prepared environment whispers invitation, freedom is guided by loving limits, and the child’s natural tendencies lead the unfolding.

In Montessori, school transforms into a place of quiet reverence:
Materials await like patient teachers, drawing forth sustained concentration and joyful mastery.
Practical life activities—pouring water, caring for plants, setting a table—instill responsibility as a source of dignity and grace.
Uninterrupted work cycles allow the soul to deepen in focus; silence is discovered as sacred space; peace emerges not as a rule, but as the natural fruit of mutual respect and inner order.
Mixed-age communities nurture empathy, mentorship, and belonging; the guide observes with scientific humility, presents with exact beauty, then steps aside—trusting the child's own path.

Here, the child is not merely educated; they are seen, respected and trusted.
They are met with the profound regard that affirms:
You are capable.
You are whole.
Your inner light is already burning.

As Maya Angelou so movingly taught:
“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

And echoing this spirit of humble, transformative love, Mother Teresa reminded us:
“If you want to change the world, go home and love your family. If you cannot feed a hundred people, then feed just one.”

In the Montessori classroom, this love is lived in the smallest, most faithful acts:
the silent observation that allows discovery,
the patient wait that lets a child persist and triumph,
the gentle presence that turns conflict into grace,
the daily feeding of one child's spirit with respect, freedom, and peace.

Dr Montessori herself spoke directly to this sacred work:
“The greatest sign of success for a teacher is to be able to say: ‘The children are now working as if I did not exist.’”

And in her vision for humanity:
“Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war.”

“The child is both a hope and a promise for mankind.”

Children leave home each day to enter this kind of school, where the paradigm has truly shifted—where they are fed not with endless information, but with the essential nourishment: the felt experience of being capable, worthy, and peaceful.
They return each afternoon a little more radiant: cups filled to overflowing with self-trust, inner discipline, quiet joy, and the living seeds of the peace Maria Montessori entrusted to the dear, all-powerful children.

Because they have been made to feel seen and loved in their unfolding,
they carry forward not just knowledge,
but the gentle revolution of small acts of love—the very revolution that Maya Angelou, Mother Teresa, and Maria Montessori knew could heal the world, one child at a time.

For every child who steps through that door,
we prepare with deepest reverence.
And the children, in their silent, radiant power, guide us all toward wholeness.

With gratitude to all who follow the path of peace. ©️Althea Cutting
Global Montessori Community

Level 3 Early Years Educator required
Hours: 2 days per week 7.30-4.30 (Tuesday & Thursday ideally but can be negotiated. More days may be available in the future)

Do you believe childhood should be full of laughter, curiosity, and feeling safe and loved? We’re looking for a nurturing, friendly, and fun Early Years Educator to join our preschool team, a bonus if familiar or trained with Montessori!

Email or call us today!