Deep in my heart, I felt that the best place to run a Montessori school is not the usual bungalow or semi detached house in a concrete jungle, that met the minimum requirements of the Fire Department, Health Department, Social Service Department, Education Department or City Council’s building regulations.
I have had a thought that the best place for me to run a pre-school is to purpose- build a school on the farm that I grew up on. The only problem is: I would not have any students.:-) I do not think the people in the village are open to the idea of paying fees to send their children to “play”.
My siblings and I grew up on a rubber estate and then a farm. Despite of very little materials and entertainment outlets, I have fond memories of all sorts of explorations after school and endless activities to do.
My brother and I would catch tadpoles from the ponds and kept until they grew into frogs. We would catch shrimps from the streams and played “masak-masak” (pretended cooking) at the backyard. We extracted oil from the plants and “stole” some flour from the kitchen and “cooked” up a storm, usually.
When it rained, the fish will swam upstream out of the dam nearby, and we could catch the fish easily because they were jumping up and down and fell on the banks of the streams that passed through the farm. My dad and some neighbors would catch this fish during the raining season and sold to the people at the neighboring villages. My next door neighbor taught my dad how to knit the fishnets, my brother and I observed and learned to do the same.
We helped counting and packing the chillies before my mother brought them to sell to the people in the neighboring villages. My oldest brother and I always did very well in maths thanks to all this practical counting exercises that we have. 
My youngest brother like to dig earthworms, catch all sorts of bugs and study them, he also collected the plants, life science or biology was always his favorite subject and he is a Genetics major university student.
When my nephew was young, when he and his family were living with grandparents, he was a little curious boy who like to explore the nature and would find wonders in the creepies and crawlies that he found on “field trips” to the backyard. But, after living in the city for 5 years now, though he did well in school academically, he had lost the sense of wonders to learning and his curiosities about the natural world around him. When invited to go to the backyard, he would give excuses like “It’s so hot outside” “I showered already, don’t want to get dirty”
The soil maybe dirty to the city kids, they were source of pocket money to buy books I liked. During the long school breaks in November and December, my parents allowed us to work in the estate, bagging soil for planting rubber trees. We also collected the rubber seeds and sold them for money. Although it was hard work under the hot sun and the pay was pathetic, it was a lot of fun making RM100 during the holidays in the late 70s and early 80s when Ice Kacang (Ice with red beans) was only 10 cents a bowl. Well, all this unfiltered UV eventually showed up as freckles on my face many years later!
A school on a farm provides so many hands-on activities and practical life opportunities that promote real learning. Though we didn’t have much opportunities to go on family vacation or travel around many places with this pretty Delsey luggage bags, we learned a great deal about nature through the environment we were in. I do believe that children who are near the earth somehow grow up more down to earth. My brother though grew up on the same farm as I did, he didn’t want to raise his children that way. He watched way too much TVs this days and raise his children as TV viewers instead of readers.