Summertime in Montessori Public Schools — Instituto Nueva Escuela

Summer has arrived! This means fun and learning for Montessori public school students. And for Instituto Nueva Escuela (INE) it is an opportunity to support them through volunteering.

Some schools have carried out different initiatives during the month of June in which INE Volunteer Program has been able to contribute with experiences for the boys and girls thanks to the generosity of the volunteers.

One of them was the volunteer Dessire Merced, from Banco Popular de Puerto Rico (BPPR), who visited the Juan Ponce de León school in its traditional summer camp, which has been held in this community since 1999. Every year Juan Domingo's summer camp is full of fun for the children who come together and this year it was also full of rhythm and with Puerto Rican Bomba flavor.

Volunteer Dessire Merced offered a bomba workshop to the participants, both boys, girls and leaders. The workshop consisted of knowing three steps of this dance and knowing the instruments that allow this melody.

It is not the first time that Dessire has volunteered in our project, since her first experience was in the month of May when she taught a rain stick workshop at the Luis Muñoz Rivera ll Montessori school in Guaynabo. Her experience was so gratifying that she offered to provide the bomba workshop.

For their part, the children attending Inés María Mendoza Montessori school summer camp in Caimito also enjoyed their great adventure traveling to different parts of the world.

Through these trips they enjoyed recreational activities such as dance, sports, crafts and themes that identify these countries, such as renewable energy.

Thanks to INE’s staff and its Volunteer Program, volunteers Carolina Ballester Sánchez, Fabián Hernández, BPPR employee and Karla Soto, MCS employee, read to the participants the story “Alí - Alí” by the Puerto Rican author Rosa Martínez Lorenzo.

They also gave a presentation on the humming bird of Puerto Rico and made bird feeders as part of the learning experience for the 50 boys and girls participating in the summer camp.

"reading is a dreams workshop" Ana María Matute

And for the second consecutive year, the Alejandro Tapia y Rivera Montessori Secondary school in Lajas offered summer workshops on marine and coastal ecosystems to students between 13 and 17 years of age.

This year the workshops were divided into two weeks and each one impacted 20 students. The experience was carried out thanks to the support of the INE and the alliance with Caricoos, Marine Sciences of the University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez Campus, Sea Grant and the Auxiliary Secretariat of Montessori Education (SAEM).

Each week was filled with learning about coastal erosion, climate change, water quality, oceanography, and more marine science. In addition to being a learning experience for the students, the summer workshops helped them complete their community and vocational hours.