Local Montessori program focuses on the environment

Love of learning, nature and feeling at 'home’ feed this school Vernon, N.J. — Putting on slippers, laying on the rug beside a dog, playing in a large yard, going into the kitchen for a snack, sleigh riding down the hill, reading in a special corner, going out to feed the chickens and get the eggs. Sounds like the day of a child at home on the farm, But this list of activities is typical for a child attending Fields of Green Montessori School in Vernon. This comfortable place isn’t at anyone’s home, but it was designed with that feeling in mind. Children learn best when feeling secure and at home. This is part of the Montessori philosophy laid down by Maria Montessori, Italy’s first woman physician back in the late 1800s who first specialized in brain development in children. Montessori Education Week, which just concluded on March 4, is a time when local Montessori schools show their stuff and explain the philosophy of Montessori education to the community. Debbie Smorto, owner and director of Fields of Green, explains that Maria Montessori believed that children learn best through the medium of nature and that belief sparked Smorto’s interest. Smorto’s own children attended another Montessori school in New York state much like the one she created in Vernon. When Smorto’s children attended Montessori 25 years ago, she was working as a naturalist at High Point State Park in Sussex. Realizing that Montessori and the natural world were such a good fit, and after being asked by her children’s’ school to teach there, she found it a perfect blend. Smorto began designing her curriculum each year around a natural theme, and when the time came for her to create her own school, she carried the theme over to design a Montessori school with an environmental umbrella, as she calls it, over the entire curriculum, which is traditional Montessori. “We were a green school before the word 'green’ was the new catch phrase,” says Smorto. Open space Fields of Green, often called FOG by her 65 or more families, is set in a 250-year old farmhouse on three and a half acres, surrounded on three sides by 95 acres of Open Space land owned by Vernon Township. They have been a school for 14 years now, but in this location for the past seven years. “Kids feel like they’re coming to their second home when they come to school,” says Smorto. “Oftentimes they cry when it’s time to leave, rather than when they’re dropped off. This upsets the moms, but we tend to like it. It shows us that the kids are truly happy in their learning environment here at Fields of Green.” New rates in recession The school offers programs for children from 18 months to eighth-grade. In this recession, however, the school is finding that many people are unable to afford private school costs and have to opt to send their children to public schools, even though their original goal was to have their children brought up in a private school setting. To help families out, Smorto has decided to lower her elementary and middle school tuition rates this fall, offering a 30 percent discount off the tuition for these levels.

New business venture lets children help children
Miss Deb’s elementary students cannot stop talking about their goal this year: putting a smile on a child’s face.
The elementary students at Fields of Green Montessori school have been raising money all year on their own, hoping to get $250 to send to Smile Train, a non-profit organization dedicated to giving children around the world much-needed cleft palate surgery.
“One day a student came in with the ad for Smile Train, and the idea began to blossom among the students,” says Debra Smorto, Field of Green’s owner, director and elementary school teacher.
Smorto helped to guide the children to organize different fundraising events within their learning community of families since October. Collecting dollars and cents from the families at bake sales, cookie exchanges and through direct solicitation among family and friends, the children have gathered two-thirds of their goal.
Recently, after an arts and crafts project taught by one student’s grandmother involving making pom-poms, Smorto made a simple remark to the students.
Hey, I’ll bet you guys could make a new fad out of making pom-poms and selling them.”
From there, the students figured out a name for their new business: Puffoodles. Their first homework assignment was to create a slogan and a jingle for their new products and now the children are creating their first prototypes to begin selling.
Even during this recession, entrepreneurship thrives and the ideas are being generated by kids trying to help kids.
To purchase a Puffoodle, call the Fields of Green at 973-823-0804.