I often wonder what our classroom looks like through the eyes of an observer. To watch the children work with fresh, naive eyes. To listen to the symphony of a classroom of children at work. To me, I can hear a pinnacle of noise and movement, and as though a switch was flipped, the din of chairs and footsteps and voice falls to a hum. Or a buzz. Perhaps it’s like the business of a beehive. Busy little children, whose movements and voices at the peak of concentration and interest, hum along. Movement and outdoors are integral to a Montessori environment, as natural as a bee's path from the flower to the hive. The traditional definition of school outdoors, recess, is such a small piece of movement for Montessori classrooms. Yes, children have playtime, and we think of the playground as just as necessary as our classroom. But movement, good physical work, occurs naturally in the Montessori classroom. In fact, Dr. Montessori herself designed classrooms to allow for as much freedom of movement as possible, saying,

Many of us, in thinking back to our own school-age years, picture a traditional school setting. We think of desks: sitting to learn, asking permission to stand, still and silent in order to receive knowledge from the teacher. By contrast, in a Montessori setting, children get up as they please: walking to peruse shelves, sweeping, scrubbing tables, gathering materials for an art project. In our class, in addition to the freedom to flow through the classroom, we have directed movement activities: a sit-and-spin for proprioceptive stimulation, light medicine balls to roll for heavy work, an ab roller for crawling to foster core strength, and walking on the line activities. Older children learn verbs by acting them out: skip, jump, and spin! Younger children go on hunts for as many triangles as they can in the environment. Before we even get outside, our indoor activities run the gamut of gross motor skills. Imagine being so active before the bell rings for recess!

But let’s move outside to our adjoining outdoor space. Where possible, Montessori classrooms have both indoor and outdoor workspaces. Our classroom has a side yard with a pergola, flower beds, and 6 small, child-sized picnic tables. The side yard door is open each day, weather permitting. Children choose when and where they work with each material. As in our classroom, space for seating is dictated by the environment, not a teacher. “Is there space to work outside?” instead of “it’s your turn to work outside” or “you may work outside on Mondays only” Children enjoy bird watching, gardening, scrubbing, cloud identification, even art outside. This week at my school the weather was especially beautiful. While I was giving a six-year-old a lesson on dissecting and labeling the parts of a flower outside, a three-year-old was making bubbles with an egg beater at the table next to us. Past her, a child from the class next door was raking the rocks, and on the far side of him, in the class at the end of the hall, children were blowing paint with straws. It was a beautiful sight to take in.

Visitors to Montessori classrooms see beautiful outdoor environments, but they might not fully understand what that means for the child. An open door means nature is always part of our curriculum. Nature is an invitation for calm, thus an opportunity to self-regulate. Nature is an invitation for science: rocks offer a lesson in fossils, geology, and an insight into Earth’s history. Finding a fossil in the pea gravel is more exciting than finding a four-leaf clover in our class.

But let’s move even farther outside, to the playground, where we think of the “real” outdoors happening at school. In our outside spaces, we see games of soccer, foursquare, and many variations of tag, whose rules pass from child to child, almost like a virus, as though understanding of the game passes with a glance and a touch. We hear children learning the words to London Bridge, redefining the rules of freeze tag (zombie or shark freeze tag anyone?). We see children, emboldened by friends’ cheers, crossing the monkey bars for the first time.

Sports and free play have very different meanings depending on one’s perspective. To an adult, sports are about accuracy of skill, and the rules are immutable. Recess is just play, free from rules in order to be enjoyable. As adults, fun must be both organized and, contrarily, the opposite of work.