Oaklea Montessori Colchester, New Town

⚽ The World cup has arrived at Oaklea Montessori nursery ⚽

What a fun filled week we have all had at Oaklea Montessori nursery. The children have enjoyed taking part in lots of exciting activities, exploring, creating, and learning through play.

As Montessori said "Play is the work of the child."

🌳 May Half Term 🌳
Here are some of the activities that we have enjoyed this May half term, with Montessori activities and 30 days wild.

🌳 Picnic 😋
🌳 Visit to the nature garden
🌳 Smelling bottles with herbs
🌳 Ice play
🌳 Designing a bug hotel
🌳Making clay creatires
🌳 Making paper boats and watching them float
🌳 Learning about bees
🌳 Building 'ee' phonogram words including bee, using Montessori's small moveable alphabet
🌳 Tree and leaf puzzles

Here is the link if you would like to join the 30 days wild:
https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/30dayswild

What a FUN week at Oaklea Montessori nursery.

⭐REMINDER: We hope all our term time families and staff have a nice half term with lots of fun! We will continue to see All Year Round children from Tuesday 26th May.

Dawn and Marie 😊

"Help me to help myself" is a Montessori mantra focusing on fostering independence by preparing an accessible environment where children learn to care for themselves.

Celebration of life

Oaklea birthdays are very important to us. Each child has a Montessori birthday circle or celebration of life ceremony on his or her birthday. During this ceremony, children and practitioners form a circle around a representation of the sun (yellow felt and candle), the birthday child carries a globe and walks around the sun one time per year of life. This ceremony is just one of the many ways we help children to feel special and connected to their world 🌎

Nursery visit for Oaklea New Towns school leavers,.

The children visited Colchester's Natural History Museum, it had so many things for the children to explore!

🌍 Earth Day at Oaklea. 🌍

Understanding and looking after our natural world is an integral part of our Montessori ethos.

Today the children learnt about protecting the earth through hands on activities including land, air and water activities, making their own planet earth and finding some bug stones that were hidden in the compost for the children to find and feed them some herbs.

As Montessori wrote, “The land is where our roots are,” “The children must be taught to feel and live in harmony with the Earth.” 🌍

At Oaklea we are a Montessori nursery. Montessori curriculum is a hands-on, experiential method of education. The Montessori curriculum is designed to help children develop a foundation of knowledge and skills through repetition and practice.

Montessori's 5 Curriculum Areas are:

Practical life: Independence, social skills and care for the environment

Sensorial: Colours, shapes, textures, weights, dimension, discrimination and distinguishing between smells, taste and sound

Mathematics: Numbers, quantities, counting, addition, subtraction, decimal system, multiplication and division

Language: Oral language, phonics, letter formation, sentence structure, vowels and consonants, writing, reading and early literacy skills

Culture: Geography, botany, zoology, science, history, music and art