Exposure to the Nature in My Childhood

Exposure to the Nature in My Childhood

                                                                                                 -Bishnu Paneru

When I got chance to work in a Montessori school at Lalitpur, Nepal from 2008 to 2013, I got to know real Montessori philosophy and applied while teaching in the middle school. I sat for many philosophy classes conducted by Neena Rana, a MCI London and AMI USA certified trainer. Maria Montessori emphasized on natural development of the child. After observing children for a long time she discovered that, children practice independence, develop self esteem, and acquire habits and social skills from the environment. They tend to play with soil/sand, water and things around them and choose activities to sharpen their gross and fine motor skills and develop creativity. She discovered that children loves nature so there is nature corner in each Montessori school. Today I am going to share my childhood activities how I practiced independence, played with soil & water and wandered in nature fearlessly following the natural pattern of Developmental Psychology.

I was born on the lap of popular hill station Nagarkot; opening eyes midst of trees, terraces of field with corn, paddy, wheat, millet and beautiful orchard with guava, plum, percimon, orange, raspberry, blue berry and many other wild fruits.

My house was made up of stone and mud with thatched roof. We had a wooden ladder to go to up stairs. I was about 3 years old, I chose to do adventure with wooden ladder. Two 6 feet long and 10 inch width wooden planks were carved into groove to fix six horizontal 3.5 feet long wooden planks. I started to climb few steps and climbed down. The first time reached on top of the ladder, I watched down with the sense of triumph, like Tenzing and Hilary watched down from the top of the Everest. Thank you to my mother who did not stop me in the beginning though she was cooking in the kitchen on the ground floor and aware about my expedition. From top I gave smile to her as well - saying see mom your son has achieved a lot but was not responding. People say, “Climbing down the Everest is more challenging than to climb up”. I reached on top and enjoyed my victory. Then another challenge came up to climb down the wooden ladder. As every child is risk taker I decided to take risk to climb down rather than calling mother for help. Finally I made it. It my journey of adventure started climb up and climb down. Then I added some more activity of summersault in the ladder.

As time passed on I started to go to a stream nearby my house with friends and seniors for swimming. The pool was a small dam made by farmers to channelize water for irrigation and water mill for grinding grains. At present in the same community I can see there are no such pools in existence and children are not allowed to wander in the nature independently. Thank god my parents never stopped me to go and have fun with water in a small pool and wander in the nature freely. We were our own swimming coach. The day I learn swimming added another victory in life.  As we get exhausted after swimming, we used to take out clayey soil from the river bank and do clay work making body of the bus, tiers, fruits, animals. At present we can buy artificial clay in the market which we have extracted from nature fee of cost and used without adult’s guidance. After keeping our models in sun for two days, we used to fix tires in the main body. Our bus was ready fastened with a long string to pull it in the courtyard.

While taking break from swimming, at times use used to collect handful of small pebbles as equal to the size of grams and drop it on the flat stone. We took turn to collect one-one pebbles without shaking any others. Those who could collect more pebbles would be the winner. Later I understood that we did that activity to sharpen our fine motor skill. Another time we used to play with 5/7 round shaped pebbles (in Nepali language Gatta). Each of us had to through one pebble up and collect one from ground with one hand and after that collect the one which was in the air as well. It also helped to develop gross motor skills. I used to have plenty of marbles in my pocket and play in leisure time to develop motor skills.

Sometimes we used to go for jungle safari, which was fun to wander in the jungle exploring plants, birds and animals. Thank god we never encountered leopard in the jungle. It was a adventurous journey walking without any path, clinging into the bushes.  

Our evening game was also goal oriented. When we saw a fallen tree, we played swinging and walked on the log balancing the body. Hide and seek, kabaddi, Catch Me If You Can were some games we played for physical and social development. We played a game in a soil. We hid a small piece of wood branch in a long heap of soil and the opponent needed to guess by placing his/her crossed hands palm.

Dr. Maria Montessori always encouraged children at school to give bath to a baby doll, use clay or plado(made up of wheat flour, oil and different powder colour) frequently in the classroom. For the physical development she installed climbing frames, for body balance she installed motor tires which we used to do walking on the fallen trunk of tree. Every Montessori School has a sand pit where children go and play every day to develop their creativity and imagination and to calm down their hyper active behaviour as well.

Due to urbanization children’s access to soil, natural pools and rivers, natural things are rare. They tend to get attracted towards these things, play with them to sharpen their gross and fine motor skills, imagination and creativity and physical, social, cognitive and emotional development. I am a lucky child to get exposure to these things as per my childhood need.

Every parent, school and community need to manage environment to give exposure to children to soil, water, toys, outdoor activity with their same age group children in the open space for the overall development.