Monarch Montessori is tucked away between UBC and Kitsilano and surrounded by the true elements of what we know as Beautiful British Columbia. The Founder and Principal, Grace Chou has been a long standing supporter and customer of Natural Pod since October 2014. I...
Last week we brought you the story of the new Fernwood Elementary School, multi-age, nature based learning programs that are starting in just a couple of short weeks on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia, Canada. There are no students at school at this time of...
Our very own Michelle Carpenter, Chief Strategy Officer of Natural Pod, is A4LE SchoolsNEXT Southeast Chair, National Co-Chair, and committed to the future of the SchoolsNEXT student design competition. Last year she documented her participation experience in the...
There is growing consensus among educators, neuroscientists, and child development researchers that the environments in which children learn matter as much as what they are being taught. Nowhere is this more evident — or more underutilized — than in early childhood...
Well organized classroom storage can be one of the most effective ways to bring calm into your classroom as a new school year begins. After all, how can you create a truly functional and inspiring space while being surrounded by an overwhelming number of materials. We...
We spend ninety percent of our lives indoors in environments where we live, learn, and work. In some countries, that number is even higher due to extreme climate and outdoor pollution. If we spend ninety percent of our time indoors, that means that by the time our...
As schools are planning their reopening and educators, families and students are figuring out how teaching and learning will look going forward, we recognize the experience will be different for everyone. How we can help is to offer solutions from a place of...
Our classroom is moveable. We held various configurations depending on our intentions. Because the tables are so flexible, and hold so many bodies, we were able to use them in many different ways such as banquet-style for meal-times and large gatherings, to theatre...
I first fell in love with biomimicry while attending a county-wide science leadership meeting in February 2017. I was there in my capacity as science department chair at Oak Park High School in California’s Oak Park Unified School District. It was toward the end of...
We are often building and creating spaces for an audience we rarely interact with. Even scarier, we are often building based on our own experiences, some of which we had 10, 20, or dare I say 40 years ago. A few things have changed a wee bit since then. So, how...