The 3-6 sensory education of Montessori, which is premised on being indoors, is unsatisfying. Montessori education can still evolve. This also means returning to the starting point of Maria Montessori. This episode is about the possibilities of outdoor Montessori education.
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Profile
Yati Obara
Editor-in-Chief, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1989. CEO of Motherhand and Co-Director of the nonprofit think tank Polymath Research. Holds an M.Eng. and is an AMI-certified teacher. Focused on Montessori developmental theory and AI. Mother of two.
Hiro Obara
Publisher, Scientific Montessori
Based in Japan, born in 1990. Works as a software developer and a weekend farmer. Father of two.
From indoor to outdoor, sensorial education using the Earth.
Hiro
In the last episode, we talked about how the essence of the senses is electromagnetic-wave detection. For three to six, I want to discuss what to do in practical terms.
Yati
In Montessori theory, ages 0 to 3 are for accumulating sensory experiences; then ages 3 to 6 are for organizing and refining those experiences. For temperature, for instance, there’s a material called the thermic bottles, metal containers filled with water at 10-degree intervals. You grip them, feel the temperature, and match the ones that are the same. That’s how you refine your sense that temperature is something measurable, that a 10-degree difference feels like this. But now we run an outdoor-style Montessori school, and for ages three to six, even experiences are,
Hiro
nowhere near enough. In modern society, there aren’t many opportunities to use the senses like that. So when people say “accumulate lots of sensory experiences during zero to three,” I wonder if kids really are. Maria Montessori was speaking about 100 years ago. Life then and now are completely different. Today’s lifestyles stimulate the senses far less. Especially since 2020, since the pandemic, that’s even more true. In daycares, for example, masks covered mouths.
Yati
Masks make voices harder to hear, and hiding the mouth makes it harder to imitate pronunciation.
Hiro
Right. You can think of it as a filter in between. That structure shows up elsewhere. Zoo animals aren’t really “real.” TV footage is edited, viewed through some filter. Social media is the same. Instead of going somewhere and seeing and hearing for yourself, you’re watching what someone else saw and heard. Filters everywhere.
Yati
True. So given that, how should we set up sensorial-education environments for three to six?
Hiro
My conclusion: I want to propose “wild Montessori education.” Doing thermic bottles in a cramped room and calling that “sensorial education,” sensorially, that’s pretty weak.
Yati
Well, at our school we routinely do bonfires, so I see your point. And 3-year-olds do the fire-starting themselves.
Hiro
Right. You’re around the fire going, “It’s hot!” Maybe a stick gets charred, or you get a small burn. Burning grass smells scorched; smoke stings your eyes.
Yati
And toasted marshmallows are delicious.
Hiro
Oh, the potato’s done. Judging by smell.
Yati
Burning apple-tree wood smells wonderful. There’s a three to six activity called “walking on the line,” where you make a large ellipse on the floor with tape, and children walk on it with proper posture. You can adjust difficulty: carry a spoon with a ping-pong ball, hold a bell without ringing it, balance a book on your head. At a well-known Montessori school, I saw a 6-year-old light a candle with a match and walk the line holding it. When I first learned about Montessori, I was amazed that a 6-year-old could light a match. But now that we do wilder activities, our 3-year-olds light matches routinely. They use the embers to roast marshmallows. It becomes natural.
Hiro
At Polymath School in Morioka, our school, the primary program does that kind of wild Montessori. A bit of a plug. [laughs]
Yati
The candlelit line-walking is solemn and beautifully Montessori. Compared to that, what we do is almost feral, kind of funny, actually. [laughs] The kids feel natural and free.
Hiro
Yeah. There’s no sense of being forced.
Yati
Observing them, I noticed younger children watch the older ones intently for a while. Then, when something inside tells them “I can do this,” they start. At first they just watch, thinking, “I’m scared, I won’t do it.” Then suddenly they get the confidence: “I can do this too.” That was a discovery. It’s not pretty at all, just wild.
Hiro
Right. Let me introduce what we do at the primary program and what we value. It’ll sound promotional, but here goes. Besides bonfires, we climb a small hill, maybe about 30 meters high, and come back down. For adults it’s no big deal, just decent exercise, but for kids it’s challenging. Legs, core, they really have to work.
Yati
Right. The trail has steps, and even so it’s tough. Around 3 years old, oddly enough, they never say, “I’m tired, carry me.” Walking through a big shopping mall, they’d whine, “I’m tired, I want to ride the kids’ character cart.” But on the mountain, they keep going: “Big leaf!” “A chestnut fell, spiky!” “A bug!” “Something’s dead!” “A baby tree is growing!” Before they know it, they’ve reached the top.
Hiro
Yeah. There’s a “forest kindergarten” element. Compared to real forest kindergartens, we’re beginners. It’s more of a hill attached to a park. I don’t know if other prefectures have parks this size, maybe 20 times larger than what most people imagine.
Yati
There’s a huge lawn, too. Parks in Iwate are enormous. The park we use is 80,000 square meters, about 1.7 Tokyo Domes, using the famous Tokyo baseball stadium as a unit of area, the way people often do in Japan.
Hiro
Tokyo Dome as a unit doesn’t mean much to me. [laughs]
Yati
We’ve also gone fishing. It was a fish pond, but it’s in the forest, where you can catch iwana, a river trout. A child caught one alone, and when removing the hook, they found it incredibly slimy, totally different from ocean fish. Then they gutted, grilled, and ate it themselves. At the end, a big one was caught, and when they opened it up, eggs spilled out.
Hiro
And the swim bladder.
Yati
Right. A child noticed, “Fish don’t have lungs.” But really, the slimy texture left a strong impression.
Hiro
To bring it home, you freeze it and stab a knife into the head.
Yati
Yes. You put the fish in a bag with ice. The kids watched intently. A fish that was swimming moments ago becoming food. Next time, I want to skewer it and grill it over the bonfire. But if we did that in the forest now, bears might show up.
Hiro
True. So we’re constantly striving for the wildest sensorial education we can manage. City people might think we’re just bragging. We’re learning by trial and error. Outdoor Montessori.
Yati
Back to fire: some kindergartens consider it “fire work” when children use a snuffer to put out a candle during religious time. That feels lacking to me.
Hiro
Yeah. In our developmental theory, safely handling fire and cooking over it is something three to six year olds should do. Grilling food over fire, warming yourself by fire, these are things early humans did. Fire-making was among the first activities when humans gained intelligence and began making tools. Cooking started there. Doing home cooking without that experience reverses the natural order. First you learn to use fire; then you learn to cook.
Yati
Right. Around a bonfire, wild instincts revive, adults enjoy it, too.
Hiro
Yeah. Adults feel their daily stress melt away watching fire.
Yati
When my younger daughter was about 2, she was eager to help with cooking at home but kept wanting to be near the flame. She described it as wanting to “poka-poka,” to get warm. I loved how that expressed an instinctive draw to fire. So when we boiled soba, the Japanese buckwheat noodle, I let her add the noodles herself, whatever she decided she could do. Kids want this, and if parents are a little careful and willing, even small children can do more at home than you’d think. Bonfires are harder, locations are limited. We struggled to find a place. Basically, it has to be a campground.
Hiro
Right.
Yati
So at home, even lighting an aromatherapy candle to show real flame is fine.
Hiro
Stovetops are often induction now.
Yati
We’re getting further and further from fire. Wild Montessori really is necessary.
Hiro
Right. Even just boiling noodles is a huge experience, at home or outside. We’re experimenting with outdoor Montessori as a concept. Nobody else is doing this; it’s all about what to do indoors. Outside, spilled water doesn’t matter.
Yati
We tested that, too. Carrying a container of water on a tray in the park. Amazing focus, walking a long distance, clearly enjoying it.
Hiro
Also, with fire, wind is a real challenge, unlike at home, where wind doesn’t stop you from cooking.
Yati
True. You develop ingenuity. It takes time to start a fire; when it’s windy, you strike the match over and over.
Hiro
Right. How do you start a fire without firestarters? It’s tough. There’s a lot to think about. Just being outside uses your brain, your senses. Basically, just being outdoors, cooking, playing, that’s enough.
Yati
Once you do it, you realize the kids are sharper. After lighting a match, if they judge the flame will hold, they move on to the next task, gathering fallen leaves. It’s in their bones. They know what comes next; they think, “Maybe I can add this dry grass,” or “Can I add this green one?” Once, the fire wasn’t catching, and by chance my younger daughter brought a fan. She waved it, flames roared up, and it worked. Learning through discovery. Using senses, experimenting, they surpass the adults in no time. And outdoor activities, even just bonfires, have endless variation. Edamame tastes best boiled right after harvest. I want to grow edamame in a field, harvest it, and boil it immediately over a fire nearby. I look forward to ideas like that coming from the kids.
Hiro
Right. So what’s the ultimate sensorial education? Live somewhere with extreme temperature swings. [laughs]
Yati
Everyone, please move to Iwate. [laughs]
Hiro
I think that’s actually fundamental. Apples get sweeter and tastier with bigger temperature swings.
Yati
Vermont, the U.S. state that gave its name to a popular Japanese curry brand using apples and honey, has a climate similar to Iwate’s. That’s why apples grow there.
Hiro
Temperature swings matter. If it’s true for plants, it’s true for animals; if for animals, why not humans? With big swings, just surviving is tough. You have to adapt, change clothing for the weather, figure out transportation, design your home accordingly. When it snows, you shovel. Pets will die if you don’t care for them. How to get through winter. There’s so much to think about. That’s where inventiveness is honed.
Yati
We run Polymath School outdoors, so we’re facing the question: what do we do in winter in Tohoku, the cold northern region of Japan where Iwate is?
Hiro
We’ve adopted French-style vacations, really long breaks. Our summer vacation is three months; winter break is also three months. Plus spring and fall breaks. [laughs]
Yati
That’s mostly vacation! [laughs] And we only run activities two days a week.
Hiro
In France, it’s six weeks on, two weeks off, plus two to three month summer vacations.
Yati
Shocking by Japanese standards.
Hiro
Right. With that kind of rhythm, breaks everywhere, there’s freedom, so kids start learning what really matters.
Yati
Exactly. At Polymath School, the first half is outdoor activity; the second half is usually at the library. Because of the first half, the second half is incredibly rich, kids stay focused, researching what interests them. And because we don’t pack the schedule, we can research Montessori education scientifically while practicing it.
Hiro
What’s great about being scientific is reproducibility. It has to work for people with different cultures and customs around the world. Even more: it has to work for non-humans, wild animals, plants. Maria Montessori’s ideas have that potential. Nobody says this, but she was drawing on Haeckel’s biogenetic principle. If you read her books, it’s right there, but maybe because no one’s a polymath, they don’t get it.
Yati
Haeckel’s biogenetic principle: “Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.” The idea that an individual’s development repeats the evolutionary history of its species. That’s why Montessori’s books are full of examples from other organisms, tadpoles, caterpillars. And that’s why we talk about other species and discuss, from a developmental-biology perspective, why children need to handle fire.
Hiro
Maria Montessori was originally a medical doctor who studied mathematics and physics, a scientific person who later added pedagogy and anthropology. She measured children’s height, weight, everything as data. She was doing data science before the term existed.
Yati
In the zero to three international course, there’s a 250-hour observation requirement, and the data sheets had a field for finger length. It had become a formality and wasn’t required. So when you pointed out in the July issue that “thumb size might correlate with intelligence,” that was very scientific and very Montessori. And then, a paper from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology came out confirming exactly that. Thumb robustness correlates with intelligence. Scientific Montessori isn’t just explaining the latest science; it’s predicting it. [laughs]
Hiro
So, people might think we’re always making obscure, hard-to-understand points, but I’d like them to know this is the legitimate continuation of Montessori research. [laughs]
