Forest School at Echo Montessori

The following is a guest post from Jen Mason.

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The Forest School of Guelph

My name is Jen Mason and I am delighted to be offering Forest Schools to your child this year. Please read the following document to get a sense of what Forest School is, what your child will be doing in the Forest School program, and how you and your child can be best prepared for this experience.

What is Forest School?

Forest School is an outdoor education experience in which students visit the same local woodland on a regular basis. Through forest play, young people learn about the natural world and how to use their own initiative to communicate, solve problems and co-operate with others. (Adapted from Archimedes Training: www.forestschools.com).

The Forest Schools concept was developed in the Scandinavian countries in the 1950s and brought to the United Kingdom in the early 1990s. Since then, it has gained tremendous popularity in the UK and is widely available there. The Forest School of Guelph is the second Forest School in Canada. The Forest School of Guelph and Echo Montessori School
Echo Montessori School is perfectly located to offer a Forest School program as it backs onto the Hanlon Creek Park and Sanctuary Woods. Children’s House students at Echo Montessori School will benefit from one hour of Forest School in this natural environment each day except in extreme weather conditions.

With their teachers and Jen Mason (the Forest School Program Leader), students will begin in the back yard of the school and move further afield to explore and experience the forest and natural area through the back gate. We will not cross any roads.

While many adventures are student-led, there are guided activities as well. These may include
shelter/fort-building, environmental art, make-believe activities, exploration adventures, game-playing, drama, music-making, sensory awareness activities, and naturalist training.

The Benefits of Forest School

Several studies conducted in the UK indicate that Forest Schools have numerous benefits for students including:

1. Improved physical skills (increased stamina, and improved fine and gross motor skills),
2. Increased understanding of the outdoors and respect for nature,
3. Heightened motivation and concentration,
4. Improved ability to work with others including an increased awareness of the consequences of their actions on peers,
5. Increased self esteem and self confidence, and
6. Language development.

(From: http://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/website/forestresearch.nsf/ByUnique/INFD-5Z3JVZ)

Forest School Program Leader and Founder of the Forest School of Guelph: Jen Mason

I am a certified teacher, and outdoor, environmental educator. Since 1989, I have worked with young people in a variety of settings in Canada, the United States, and Australia leading wilderness trips and teaching about the environment and how we can live sustainably.
I have a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Education degree (with a focus in Outdoor and Experiential Education) from Queen’s University and a Master’s degree in Ecology-Based Education from Prescott College in Arizona. In addition, I have taken numerous wilderness skills courses. I have current first aid and CPR certification.

I am passionate about getting kids of all ages outside into the natural world.

Clothing List

Children’s House students will be outside in the woods behind the school for one hour each day (except in extreme weather conditions). At The Forest School of Guelph, we subscribe to the maxim that “there is no such thing as bad weather; only bad clothing.” Dressed properly, children can enjoy their experience in the outdoors regardless of the weather. Students will be required to wear long-sleeved shirts, long pants, socks and closed-toed shoes every day
(even in warm weather). This will protect them from scratches and insect bites. Additionally, each child will need the following items for the early fall:

1. Waterproof rain gear—pants and jacket. To keep your child warm and dry, rain gear must be waterproof and not ‘water resistant’. (If you have trouble finding waterproof raingear at a reasonable price, please contact me).
2. Sun hat/baseball hat
3. Warm layer (thick fleece is ideal) that fits under the rain jacket
4. Warm pants that fit under the rain pants
5. Sunscreen
6. Insect repellent (if you would like us to apply it)

I will send a list of clothing necessary for the late fall and winter later in the term.
I am very excited to be offering this wonderful opportunity to your child. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Delay is over

We have had a significant delay between blob posts through the summer months. However, in this case it was not due to holiday time, but, instead it has been because we have been hard at work preparing the new school.

Expect a number of posts over the next few days as we update you on what has been going on.

Website Goes Live

A significant day for us as we have made the website available at www.echomontessori.com

We elected to unveil before we had completed putting all our information up because we think there is enough there for you to get a sense of our program. Expect additions to the material that is there and changes to the appearance of the site over the next weeks.

There are lots of ways to contact us on the site so let us know what you think.

Our Future Program

While we are all busy working on our first year program we wanted to take a quick breather to outline our future program direction:

Our plan is to expand to offer a full range from Toddler to Middle School programs over the next several years. We will expand our preschool program incrementally to facilities nearby as well as work on the logistics and zoning of operating a school in this "campus" format. Donna Booth will be leading the development of our Elementary Program. Donna's 24 years of Montessori experience ranges from her training at the International Center for Montessori Studies Foundation in Bergamo Italy to teaching and administration at the International Montessori School of Beijing (MSB), as well as teaching and directing elementary programs at the Montessori House of Children in London and the Guelph Montessori School. While we are very excited about our long term plans and will begin laying the ground work this year, our primary activities will be focused on our Toddler and Children's House programs. Our current facility and program is a seed and we expect to nuture it in this our inaugural year. We are looking forward to developing a dynamic creative school environment that is serves the children parents and staff. We invite you to join us on our journey to create a successful educational experience for all. Please stay tuned on this blog to learn of our endeavours for the future.

Beyond our own school growth plans we see an opportunity for our region to be a leader in personalization in education ranging from Montessori Programs to home school groups to Waldorf and faith based schools. If you are involved in education in our region or internationally please get in touch with us at info@echomontessori.com

Let the race begin!

The offer is now final and accepted for 798 Scottsdale Drive, in Guelph. Echo Montessori's new home. Now the heavy lifting of getting Echo ready for children and their families in time for September begins.

Check it out:


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Location, Location, Location

While location quality is always a key factor for a business, a business providing services to parents and children is even more location dependant. For us, the "school location" encompasses both geographical position, nearby attributes, and internal attributes.

Realistically, we have been searching and talking to people for almost two years about an appropriate location and along the way we have come to internalize a set of factors related to what we have been looking for. We are currently on the cusp of finalizing space at the edge of a residential area near parkland at the South end of Guelph so I though I would take this opportunity to share with you what we have been thinking about in looking for a facility:

Professionalism - We need to have space that allows parents to feel comfortable and confident. This relates primarily to the space itself, but, also to the immediate neighbourhood.

South End Location - Our target is to serve the needs of parents at the south end of Guelph, so otherwise appropriate space in other parts of the city or outside the city were not attractive.

Regulation - Aside from the general high standards of the space we were seeking we had to ensure that we understood how much effort was required to meet regulation or licensing requirements ranging from fence heights, floor space, window areas and most difficult zoning. Institutional zoned space appropriate for our long term goals is difficult to find, but, feedback we received suggests there are some planning zones with little flexibility (industrial zoning is an "employment zone") and that boundary properties near institutional zones are better targets for zoning ammendments in the future. By now we probably know our way around the Guelph Zoning bylaws almost as much as local builders!

Size and Growth Strategy Consistency - Our plan calls for beginning with a young age group and expanding the age ranges served by the school. Since avoiding the cost of excess space is a key success factor, we need space that we can grow with. Some space we had identified suited launching all age groups and an intense program to fill that space rather than the incremental launch of our current plan. Ultimately, it is difficult to make the required predictions and corresponding commitments to leases or purchase space.

Logistics - We need our location to be able to handle people and our daily operations ranging from parking to entrance area logistics (imagine lots of children with snowsuits and the importantance of getting that right), indor activity space for cold weather and meal prep or delivery. This area is a bit of a design activity between the capabilities of the space and elements of the program. For example, our current location has relatively few parking areas and we have partially addressed that with an extended drop off and pick up time as well as cooperation with our neighbours (Thanks Wellington Hospice!).

Program Support - The location for the school us support our current and planned program elements. Specifically we are focused on internal space for the prepared
environment of Montessori as well as access to outdoor and naturalized space (creeks, treed areas) to ensure outdoor program opportunities.


We ended up looking space ranging from shared space in in schools, churches or other institutional zoned areas, acquiring instituional space, use of industrial office space near parkland, cpmmercial space, and residential space.

Ultimately with all the factors above we have identified 798 Scottsdale Dr. nestled between an excellent park, near a zoning boundary to instituional space and in the target area in Guelph. If all goes well over the next few weeks we should be able to move forward with this space and can welcome you all to our school come September.

The Straightest Path

We have been putting together a number of materials related to the program we want to offer at Echo Montessori and building the plan to accomplish it. One of the early steps is to begin the licensing process for ontario(Check out the first steps at the child care learning site. But note, the Ministry of Education is soon going to be responsible, so things may change).

The first step of the licensing process is attendence to an introductory course where some basic child care facility and program information is covered and a great deal of logistical information is covered. Not always a positive discussion as you hear about how operators have got tripped up, in one case on zoning, for three years. Yikes. And zoning or location is indeed one of the first licensing hurdles as all the licensing process is so tightly bound to location. Additionally the rules come in from the municipality, the day nursuries act, insurance companies and others. All of which you have to be pretty confident you can clear before entering a lease agreement. One of the best hiccups was between the licensing body who can not license before liability insurance is in place and insurance company who would not insure an unlicensed facilty resulting in a deadlock eventually resolved by a provisional license, followed by insurance, followed by a complete license.

However, our attendence did have an interesting diversion. In the course of the discussion with the program lead we discovered there was a passionate group of parents from a formerly operating Montessori school in Orangeville. The school had closed suddenly mid year for reasons unrelated to the parents interest and they were seeking an operator. Now, we at Echo are currently "pre location" so the prospect of a built in group of parents in a slightly different region was worth spending a bit of a hectic week to share our vision for a school and our plan to achieve it before September. Keep in mind this is a complete program from Toddler through to Middle School.

It certainly pulled us off the "organic growth" program that we had been considering and brought location and startup issues into even greater focus. It also had us driving to Orangeville to get a feel for the region. We were pleasantly surprised at the depth and breadth of services in what is a relatively small town as measured by population. While we did get greater appreciation for Orangeville and met a great group of parents and teachers the ultimate result is we are not going to be operating in that area.

So our whirlwind adaptation of our program and business proposals was fun and intense but ultimately has returned us, and not by the straightest path, to a small program with big asperations. And we have come back to the path a little wiser for having travelled that way.