Mercy's Garden

Richlands Montessori Preschool

Maria Montessori

Maria Montessori didn't coin the term "mindfulness," but she was an early advocate for sustained focus and internal motivation. Her methods deliberately encourage intense concentration as the best context for early learning.

"Education is a natural process," she said, "spontaneously carried out by the human individual 
and is acquired not by listening to words but by his experience upon the environment."

OUR GARDEN

We are a garden school.

School Gardening engages students
​by providing a dynamic environment

to observe, discover, experiment, nurture, and learn. School Gardens are living laboratories where interdisciplinary lessons are drawn from real life experiences, encouraging students to become active participants in the learning process and to know where food comes from. We encourage a healthy lifestyle. All snacks are fresh fruits and vegetables, and we adhere to a water only policy.

OUR LOVE OF ART

We celebrate all things creative. In our fully stocked art room we paint and do clay work and master the fine art of cutting and glueing. We bring our academics into the art room with crafts from the different continents and cultures that we study! Every year we throw bowls on the wheel and donate to The Empty Bowls Project, which brings awareness to hunger and homelessness in our area and brings in monetary donations to the local soup kitchen. Our children have been honored to sing the blessing at this benefit every year.