Mulberry Bush Montessori, Nature Kindergarten & Forest School

19/07/2026

Please, if you get a minute, think about signing this for our cross boundary children.

Thank you & do pass the link on.
🪀

Calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to make funded early learning and childcare on a cross-local authority basis a legal right across Scotland, so no family is denied access to the childcare setting that works for them because of an arbitrary council boundary. National...

11/06/2026

The Football ⚽️ World Cup of 2026 starts today & takes place across the USA, Canada & Mexico.

It provides us at Mulberry Bush Montessori with the opportunity to explore with our children, world geography through meaningful, hands-on learning.🌎

We discover where the USA 🇺🇸, Canada 🇨🇦 & Mexico 🇲🇽 is in the world in relation to qualifiers Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿, England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 & 🇬🇧 through our hands-on puzzle maps & flags as we bring the ⚽️ tournament to life through understanding geography.

11/06/2026

17/05/2026

🌱 When children are free to follow their passions, they don’t just grow in one area—they flourish in all directions. It's not always instant or predictable, but once that spark is lit, the growth is deep, lasting, and full of life. 🪴

Montessori was the first to call these "Sensitive Periods".

Sensitive periods are optimal times in development when certain areas of the brain are most ready to benefit from experience. The brain’s plasticity is high during sensitive periods, meaning the brain has a strong ability to adapt to and learn from experiences.

At Mulberry Bush Montessori Killearn as early years professionals, we recognise the important sensitive periods in our children.

These are windows of time in which a child’s interests is focused specifically on developing a specific area of knowledge or skill set.

The length of the sensitive period is dependent on how long it takes the child to master that particular area they are interested in.

There are generally five main sensitive periods we define in our Montessori approach;

🧾Order: Begins at birth and peaks in the second year of development but continues through age 5. During this period, the child learns reasoning skills, how to organize their information and better understand the environment around them. They need consistency and repetition to learn here. As a parent, you may recognise your child’s interest in putting things away or putting objects in order.

To support this period, we set some ground rules early on & ensure we create an organised environment so that everything has a place where it lives.

👀 ✍️ 📖 Language: Lasts from birth through age five. The spoken language phase typically continues through age 3 when the child will mimic sounds and movements. Words are said, and then sentences. In the second phase; writing beings to emerge the focus is on learning the alphabet and sight words. Reading is the third phase, often beginning around age 4.5. The child learns reading skills and improves language as a result.

We focus on an environments that stimulates language; using clear positive language with our children. We read to them and importantly - we allow them to speak & encourage shared thoughts & opinions.

👃👂🏼👅 ✋🏼 Sensory Skills: Birth through age five.
In this phase, the child learns through touch, taste, and smell. To encourage this phase, we provide them with opportunities to explore and observe the environment around them - we encourage them to explore materials & later as language develops, to use their words to desbribe the textures. We use games like “I Spy” to open their world to visual stimulation & for memory, the Kim game.

👣 Movement: Birth through age 2.5 for the first phase and then 2.5 to age 4.5 for refinement and coordination.
From crawling to learning to pull up and then walk, the first phase of the movement sensitive period is all about developing gross motor cycles. We ensure that throughout our rooms, there are activities for our children with opportunities to strengthen their hands and improve their hand-eye coordination.

In the second phase, which is all about refinement and coordination, we provide opportunities for our children to manipulate & hold objects in both hands and develop more fine coordinated movements.

🗣️👌🏼Social Skills: Begins around age 2.5 and continues through age 5.
This is when developing friendships and interacting through cooperative play is so important for life to help with any concern about the development of social anxiety. To support this, the value of providing a child with regular contact with their peer group guided by EY professionals like ours, to ensure they interact positively with other children their age cannot be underestimated.

There’s never been a better time to explore sensitive periods with your child.

Let us help you.

Schedule a visit with us here at Mulberry Bush Montessori in Killearn & see what we do!

03/05/2026

As the summer draws nigh, so too does the end of some of our children's Mulberry Bush Montessori days & early year's journey with us "where little people think big!"

For parents of children, who this time last year were considering their child's school start the same year & gifted them an advantage additional year with us, the overwhelming positive benefit is just how much better prepared their children are emotionally, as well as socially not just for school - but for life.

The responsibilities & resilience our children assume & have to show in the different situations once in formal statutory education & throughout their lives - is a LOT.

We want each of our children to be able to weather life's storms with a bit more ease without being worn down by them.

The key is building their resilience in the early formative years & sometimes that takes a bit more time for some children.

Resilience isn't about "toughing it out" in silence or suppressing our struggles. It is a skill set we consciously work on bringing out ourselves & our children when they're will us throughout the day, every day they are with us.

The Seven Ingredients of Resilience are internal resources we draw upon & further develop with ourselves & our children;

🧷 Emotion Awareness and Regulation:
Creating a safe space for all of our children's feelings - happiness, fear, and sadness - while helping them navigate them when they're feeling overwhelmed by giving them the language.

⏸️ Impulse Control:
Guiding a child by giving them simple ways to pause before they act, directing them in situations they might find tricky with love & kindness toward themselves and others.

✅ Realistic Optimism:
Reminding the child in a situation they find challenging of their words & language about what is actually happening & what they might do to better deal or cope with the situation & being ready to step in if necessary.

🤸🏽Flexible Thinking:
Observing the child when challenges arise & offering help with words as to what might be the possible outcomes dependent on the actions they take. Letting them know there is usually a "Plan B."

🔋Self-efficacy:
Instilling in a child, the quiet belief that they can effect positive change as a result of their decision, action & intervention. That sometimes it is about "feeling good" (self-esteem) & sometimes it is more about knowing how to master the path ahead.

💟 Empathy:
We encourage, build & preserve strong loving social bonds with & throughout our children. We know from studies that even one enduring relationship in early years with a caring adult who is a positive role model, can help a child navigate significant hardships in later years.

🪽Reaching Out:
That additional year in early years, gives our children more chance of the confidence they need to establish as they learn to know who they are individually- to take "horizon-expanding" risks & because of the way they learn in the Montessori way, they see & understand failure as a signpost for learning rather than something to be feared.

So ....... a moment for reflection for parents of children whose birthday falls in December, January or February of the year they enter school & won't quite yet be five.

Which one of these might need a little more energy poured into it just a little bit longer?

Resilliance grows in small, measurable steps & together we can support your child to be "filled" up.

References:
Reivich, K., & Shatté, A. (2002). The Resilience Factor.

K. Reivich and J. Gillham, “Building Resilience in Youth: The Penn Resiliency Program.,” Jan. 2010, [Online]. Available: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ886218

J. J. Cutuli, J. J. Cutuli, T. M. Chaplin, J. E. Gillham, K. Reivich, and M. E. P. Seligman, “Preventing Co-Occurring Depression Symptoms in Adolescents with Conduct Problems The Penn Resiliency Program,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, vol. 1094, no. 1, pp. 282–286, Dec. 2006, doi: 10.1196/ANNALS.1376.035.

J. E. Gillham et al., “School-Based Prevention Of Depression And Anxiety Symptoms In Early Adolescence: A Pilot Of A Parent Intervention Component,” School Psychology Quarterly, vol. 21, no. 3, pp. 323–348, Oct. 2006, doi: 10.1521/SCPQ.2006.21.3.323.

Psychologists have been studying resilience since the 1970s to understand what enables individual to meet developmental milestones despite serious risk factors. Although early research used terms like

01/05/2026

"Children fall in love with the Earth through their senses and through play, not through learning facts."

Louise Chawla

At Mulberry Bush Montessori, Killearn - our children's Forest School & Nature Kindergarten experiences throughout the week, bear witness to this.

Childhood experiences associated with care for the natural world: A theoretical framework for empirical results Direct childhood experience and mentoring are key elements in adults' actions to benefit the environment The focus of this research from Dr. Louise Chawla is on those factors that contribu...

01/05/2026

💦 Keep safe doing water activities at home with your children! 💦

FREE resources to help educate everyone about water safety at home.

30/04/2026

This is a positive message of hope for those of us in the Early Years working with the under 5's.

In 1949, Maria Montessori looked back on fifty years of work and shared a powerful secret: she kept going because she was absolutely certain that we can make the world a better place.

At Mulberry Bush Montessori Killearn, we believe that too!

Sometimes the work we do as Early Years Educators or parents, feels like an uphill battle.

We see obstacles in our way, or we feel like we are starting from scratch.

Montessori’s life proves that when we focus on the potential of the child, when we follow the child, we find the strength to keep building, to keep going doing what we do.

Together, with our parents & families - we are working toward that brighter future she envisioned.

♥️

28/04/2026

This campaign highlights a critical issue facing our sector — not a difference in roles, skills or commitment, but a system-wide funding inequality

We do the same job.

Fact;
• We are paid less.
• We get half the Scottish Government funding per hour than councils for the same job.
• Not fair.
• Not equal.
• Not following the child.

Time for change.