The Observer:
The Hollis Montessori Blog
This fall, our Upper Elementary students (ages nine to twelve) spent a few days away from campus at Outdoor Classroom’s Ocean Park site in Maine. The children explored the forest, the salt marsh, and the beach. They encountered wildlife, made nature art, played team-building games, ate and served family-style meals, and learned about the environmental impacts of food and water waste. While an overnight trip can look like a break from learning, for children this age, it is part of the work.
Do you ever wonder why the Junior High class goes on long trips, or what goes into planning these trips? Each year, we plan a trip in the fall and another in the Spring. In the spring of 2026, after much deliberation, we traveled to Montreal.
The students were a lovely group to travel with and they conducted themselves so well in public; we were proud to be associated with them. The week was full of adventure and so much learning that it's hard to completely capture it. We had the pleasure of watching each student grow in self confidence as they tackled all of these new experiences.
Trips are always amazing opportunities to develop both practical and social-emotional skills. Here are just a few of the lessons and experiences our students gained during their time in Montreal…
The first few weeks in Lower Elementary classrooms (ages 6–9) are when a class builds its community. In our gatherings at the beginning of the year, we talk about how we want to feel in our classroom and what each of us needs to do so that everyone can feel that way. The children’s answers become the basis of our community agreement: the freedoms and responsibilities everyone in our community has so that we can joyfully learn and grow together.
Recently, one of our Children’s House classrooms (ages three to six) has had an explosion of work with the continent maps. Dr. Montessori believed that Geography is not just the study of facts, rather it is an exploration into the life of man. Geography is part of what Montessori classrooms call the Cultural curriculum, and its materials help children make connections across the classroom and out into the world around them.
