Our garden isn’t just a place for kids to run around in, it is a carefully designed natural playground that encourages the development of children’s gross motor skills and imagination.
It includes a round-the-tree sandpit, a hill-embedded slide, a fruit & vegetable box and other nature themed elements.
Natural Playground
At Maple Tree Montessori, we believe that children gain more by being presented with a play area that is as naturally simple as possible. This helps children develop their own imagination and creativity through play in a surrounding that is modelled on nature’s challenges and also allows them the possibility to acquire skills that will be useful in the outside world.
While manufactured playgrounds help children’s physical development (gross motor skills), natural playgrounds do not only this, but also challenge their emotional, social and cognitive creativity.
Our natural playground makes use of terrain that already exists in the garden to create an area that looks like a natural landscape, but is full of intriguing play and learning opportunities.
Children need to be exposed to nature as much as possible, so that they can learn to respect and appreciate nature’s gifts.
Fruit & Vegetable Box
Montessori focuses on the practical approach towards learning, and we apply this principle by helping the children create and cultivate a fruit & vegetable box.
In effect we are able to promote an awareness of the world around us, by showing the children how things grow, and where the food they eat comes from.
