Edition 3 | April 2018

From the Students

Interacting with the environment and caring for animals are just some of the reasons Levi loves FMS.

From the Students

Levi, 9-12 StudentLevi, 9-12 StudentLevi with Scales, our Bearded Dragon.

I like Forestville Montessori School because it doesn’t put pressure on children like some schools. In doing that, it allows children to discover what they are interested in and to explore who they are. If children are given more control over their education, then they feel more freedom. In mainstream schools you have no control over your timetable for the day and what you can learn, but at Forestville Montessori school, we plan our work and we schedule our own time so we can focus on certain learning areas more than others depending on the task.

Finding Prime Factors.In particular, I like how we interact with the environment and grow our own fresh food. Often we cook our own lunch from food we’ve grown in the gardens. Last week we harvested a huge watermelon and shared it for morning tea.

Our school allows us to interact with animals including reptiles. We care for my favourite animal, snakes and also house lizards. I love that FMS lets us become comfortable with animals rather being scared of them. Animals help kids to relax.

We never worry about homework. We work hard during the days and take the learning with us into life so homework never gets in the way of all the other things we do outside of school. Our school is also relatively small so everyone knows everyone else which makes it feel like one big family.

Montessori materials are just so creative and we use them all the time to help us go deeper into our learning and to understand the hard stuff. For example, the Checker Board helps us solve massive times tables like the one I’m doing now, 7825 X 25.

We have many excursions which I know happens in other schools too but there’s a big difference at FMS, we design and plan them by ourselves! It’s called ‘Going Out”. You start by drawing up a proposal for your teacher with all the important details like the purpose of the excursion, how it links to your learning and all the logistics like the public bus you will use. Then you seek permission and arrange for one of the teachers or the assistant to accompany you.

I love my school.