Watershed Studies Trip: backpacking, swimming, beachcombing, and more!

Mountain Laurel Montessori Farm School students spent a week-long adventure in and around Virginia Beach.  It was the culmination of the students' watershed study.  Having studied our individual water use and tested the water in the Farm School pond and local rivers, we traveled to the end of our watershed where the rivers meet the ocean.

Backpacking False Cape State Park - Day 1 (sun!)

Camping on the ocean

Reading original writing on Back Bay

Finding our watershed address: which way is North?

Backpacking False Cape State Park - Day 2 (pelting rain!)

Wet but doing ok

Watershed studies at the Virginia Aquarium

The marsh walk at the Virginia Aquarium

Watershed studies: identifying marsh grasses

the students found a live horseshoe crab

beach drawing

Ft. Monroe

We All Pitch In To Make the Playground Safer

Mountain Laurel Montessori Farm School students joined in with parents and teachers this fall to make the playground safer for our youngest students. Together we moved and spread 9,000 pounds of rubber mulch to our playground at the Front Royal campus. Our Toddler (ages 16 months to 3 years) and Primary (ages 3-6) students use the playground every day and will be much happier now.

 It was wonderful to see the faces of our youngest students watching with fascination as the "big kids" worked, and to have an opportunity for our adolescent students to give back to the campus that nurtured them from the time they were toddlers and on through elementary.

One of the unique aspects of Mountain Laurel Montessori is the strong community that nurtures children through the whole continuum of childhood, from birth through 9th grade.

Mountain Laurel Montessori MOVES

First Lady Michelle Obama is traveling the country encouraging people to move: to walk, run, play, just get out there.  

Mountain Laurel Montessori Farm School 
students MOVE every day!  

We work hard, play hard, and study hard outdoors - 

in all kinds of weather.

This photo was from a muddy spring day's soccer game.  As we hear about the childhood obesity epidemic in the United States, lament the occurence of "nature deficit disorder" among our country's youth, or worry that people don't connect farms with food, I like to look at this photo.  There is pure joy there.