ACTIVITIES OF THE COMMUNITY.
The development from Nursery School into Community has already been taking place, although the full transformation can only come with more time and more money.
An account of the different parts of the work will show, however, what the Community will be like when it finally grows into existence.
The activities now include:
1._Day School.
2._Mothers’ Club.
3._Play Hour.
4._Holiday School.
5._Country Holiday,
6._Medical Inspection.
7._Dinners.
DAY SCHOOL
Children are admitted at three years old, and at present the School contains 57 boys and girls, none of whom are over seven years old.
It is not proposed to open the School to older children but simply to keep those already there through the next seven years, so that the problems of more advanced education may be reached and solved slowly, and need not be met by rigid theories laid down in advance.
The school hours are 9 to 12 and 1.30 to 3.80, and the approximate distribution of these hours is shown in the Community Time Table. It is, however, impossible in any time table to give an impression of the work of the children, since the essence of that work is that it should be done freely and not by rule.
The things they do are varied and ingenious, some being the usual occupations of any good school or nursery, some the inventions of Madame Montessori, and some the ordinary house-hold contrivances of daily life. Knitting and washing-up, dusting and laying the table, take equal places with geometric insets, raised letters and the long stair, and jostle in competition with paper boxes, coloured beads, and the ever delightful clay modelling. Blackboards and coloured pencils for experiments in writing and drawing, movable letters, books, and figures occupy the older