Studio Demo · Fictional school — Montessori Makers School is a fictional school built by Montessori Makers Studio
Build yours →Home / School Life / Movement & Outdoors
The garden, the park, and the city as classroom.
Children at MMS are outside every day the weather allows, and most days it does not. Movement is not a reward for finishing work — it is part of how the work gets done.
75
Minutes outdoors, daily minimum
1/8
Acre garden on site
4
Blocks to Oz Park
2×
Weekly athletics, Elementary
Every day
There is no weather that cancels outdoor time.
Chicago makes this a real commitment rather than a slogan. Families receive a clothing list in August, the school keeps spare snow gear in every size, and children go out in rain, cold, and light snow. We hold the line at extreme cold and lightning, and nowhere else.
The reasons are not sentimental. Long outdoor blocks are where a great deal of the social work of the school happens — negotiating games, resolving disputes without a table nearby, and the unstructured talk that friendships are actually built from.
The garden
An eighth of an acre that has to be kept.
Upper Elementary holds the garden ledger and the calendar; every level has beds. Seeds start under lights in February, beds are turned in April, and the September harvest goes to the lunch program.
A garden is a rare thing in a school: work with a deadline that no adult set and no adult can move. The tomatoes do not care about the term calendar.
Athletics
Movement without a bench.
Elementary students have twice-weekly athletics at the field house, plus seasonal running, basketball, and an inter-school cross-country meet in October with three other Chicago Montessori schools.
We do not cut, we do not bench, and we do not keep a league table. Children who want competition find plenty of it; children who want to move without being ranked can do that too.
The practicalities
