Our Home Based Preschool
Nature Song Montessori is nestled in the heart of Rock Creek, conveniently located off the 26 Freeway at Cornelius Pass Rd. Our home based preschool has all the strengths of a Montessori classroom, and none of the wait time in busy parking lots and crowded roads. Enrollment for Summer ’24 and the 2024/25 school year has officially started and we may have spots available. Feel free to give us a call or email jessica@naturesongmontessori.com to set up a tour.
Call Today to set up a tour!
(503) 439-1114
The Montessori Classroom
Here at Nature Song Montessori we encourage a love of learning surrounded by beauty and natural elements in a home based learning environment. A Montessori prepared environment invites the child to explore their interests with self awareness and independence. Furniture and materials are age appropriate and materials are displayed with purpose in mind. A Montessori guide is always there to help connect the child to the environment through careful observation of each individual need. Children explore their interests, discover a love for learning, and thrive in every way possible.
Practical Life: The Road to Independence
Practical life activities are essential for developing everyday life skills. The Montessori environment provides a purposeful path to independence from the moment the child begins to walk freely. Children observe how to walk carefully, respectfully greet others, dish-washing, food preparation, just to name a few. The child develops motor control, coordination, independence, concentration, and a sense of responsibility. Practical Life activities are designed to help children feel a sense of belonging as they participate in familiar activities that are observed in their home environment. These experiences are meant to connect the child to their environment and lead to more purposeful and peaceful movement and choices in everyday life. Practical life activities consist of four categories:
1. Care of self and others
2. Care of the environment
3. Movement
4.Exercises in Grace and courtesy
Art
Children will develop fine motor skills and knowledge by using tools and materials correctly. How to cut on a straight line, control of movement, and concentration will allow the child to explore their interests in areas of art. We encourage the process, not the final product and most of all; art is joyful, musical, and purposeful. At Nature song Montessori, we bring an element of art into all learning topics to enrich the curriculum and provide an opportunity to expand our perspective beyond just the basics. If we are learning about the “life cycle of a plant” in Botany, we may take a walk in nature to gather sticks and leaves to make a collage, or perhaps we will create a bean “sprout house” to help retain the lesson on the stages of growing a bean.
Connecting Kids to Their Food
At Nature Song Montessori, we feel very strongly about the choices that kids are often given regarding their nutrition. Because of this, our program will feature a gardening and ecology program centered around the idea that “kids who grow kale, eat kale”. Led by Teacher Collin, students will learn about the world around them through hands on experiences growing their own lunch and snacks. Surplus harvest from the garden will be sent home with the parents and families to incorporate the “fruits” of labor into their own lunches and dinners. This connection to where their food comes from is essential when trying to get kids to make healthier dietary choices. We have already seen children walking through our gardens picking kale, arugula, tomatoes, spinach and munching happily.
Cultural Learning
Our community is a wonderfully diverse one, and as luck may have it, we benefit from this diversity by celebrating the cultural traditions and heritage of our families. We try to incorporate as many of these opportunities to learn different customs and holidays as we can, and our family style potlucks are about as tasty as it gets. Be prepared for your student to try and learn new things about the world, and the students that surround them.
Percussion and Rhythm
Life is full of patterns and beats. Students at Nature Song Montessori learn to identify and incorporate these patterns into fun and engaging exercises with our percussion teacher, Mr. Ryan. Lessons occur every Thursday, and students are excited from the moment they set up the drum circle. For the finale, they are encouraged to perform an energetic solo performance to show off what they learned that day.