• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
logo

MariaMontessori.com

A Project from Montessori Administrators Association
  • Home
  • Learn
    • About This Website
    • Montessori Overview
    • Infant/Toddler
    • Primary
    • Elementary
    • Adolescent
    • Montessori Graduates
    • FAQs
    • Glossary
  • Listen
  • search

maria

05 Dec

The Spiritual Life of Children: A December Story

Jennifer Rogers by Jennifer Rogers | Montessori Blog
8 Comments
Share

“We know how in well-led Montessori classes the children often have a remarkable susceptibility to holy and divine things. . . .we often find ourselves with unexpected revelations.” -Maria Montessori, God and the Child, 10

picture of girl watering a tree
©MariaMontessori.com

Sami had just finished reading the introduction to our Parts of the Frog booklet. Definition booklets are usually challenging for our five-year-old readers. Some of the vocabulary was new to Sami, but he sailed through the reading with ease. He paused once at the end of the first page, to comment and ask a question.

“This is really interesting,” Sami said. “I’d like to be a scientist when I grow up. Do you think I could be a scientist?” he asked.

“Of course I do.” It was a too-easy response from his teacher, but it was true and honest. “You are interested in the things scientists are interested in.”

“I think so too,” Sami said, thoughtful and sincere. “I don’t believe God would let a little boy like me want to be a scientist if I couldn’t really be one.”

Sami resumed his reading. I continued listening, balancing tears on my eyelids. There are layers of beauty, confidence, faith, and trust in Sami’s comments. I will remember his words, I thought, through the darkest days of December.

“God prods and transforms the adult through the child.” -Maria Montessori, God and the Child, 22

In the two years we have had together, Sami has learned to tie his shoes, add and subtract, and read. In these skills, I have guided him. He was a chronic worrier when we met. We have cultivated the calm confidence he now demonstrates. His comment reminded me, though, that I have learned as much as I have taught. Many of our best teachers would make similar comments, I think. We learn as much as we teach.

Several days after his first wonderings, Sami told one of his friends he thought he would be a scientist. “I want to learn about everything in the world,” he said. “I know I can’t learn everything, but I think I can try.”

Sami’s comments were simple but full expressions of his faith and his curiosity. They were also an absolutely ordinary part of his dialogue with his world. As he was reading about frogs, Sami was thinking about God. He assumes God cares about his learning. Sami’s God pays attention to the desires of a child. For Sami, God is strong and nurturing, present and loving, involved in the work of his hands and the life of his mind.

“We then see in the humble ability to love, which we sometimes look upon as weakness, the true measure of maturity. The means by which the child influences us—the respectful and trusting love – will then be our great power in the educational sphere.” -Maria Montessori, God and the Child, 49

Ours is not a parochial school. Sami is Hindu. His classmates are Christian, Jewish, and Muslim. Maria Montessori was a devout Catholic. Her writings on faith quote liberally from the Bible. She refers to specific moments in the life of Christ. Yet, in the classrooms that bear her name and the mark of her genius, expressions of faith from children of different traditions are noteworthy only because they are so normal. Children offer glimpses of their souls as they polish, scrub, read, and calculate.

In the long months of winter, especially when daylight is scarce, conversations with children can be treasures. Even people of great faith struggle as demands to spend time and money challenge our capacity to give. December days sometimes feel spiritually empty and dark.

But most days a healthy child like Sami looks up from work he loves and shares his faith in a way that is both brilliant and, for him, absolutely ordinary. Montessori often reminded adults to cooperate with the normal patterns of human development.

She also believed that “spiritual education is nothing if not simple cooperation with the grace of God” (God and the Child, 36).

Filed Under: Montessori Blog Tagged With: child, children, faith, god, maria, montessori, science, scientist, spirituality

10 Aug

Our Falls & Triumphs

Jesse McCarthy by Jesse McCarthy | Montessori Blog
5 Comments
Share

Years ago at a convention of educators, a lecturer showed a video of a young toddler trying to walk.

With each new fall, the little boy got back up, unfazed, and continued.

After a few minutes, and with a bunch of benevolent “Ooohhs” and “Ahhhhs” from the audience, he was eventually walking.

When the video stopped, the presenter left up on the screen an image of the boy, now proudly standing tall, and she said: “Isn’t he precious? and all those little falls of his – so cute!”

The audience was beaming in agreement.

But our mood immediately changed with her next words: “How about us adults, though, would we be as positive if our own falls were up on the big screen? I don’t think so. Whereas the child falls and then just continues on, untroubled, we as ‘grownups’ tend to fall and then criticize, especially when it’s our own failure we’re seeing.”

This really hit everyone in the crowd, including me.

I immediately recalled a few times I had failed in life. I remembered pretty viscerally that instead of just moving on to quick success like the boy in the video, I had been self-critical, which delayed or even made impossible my own growth.

I wondered how many times over the years I had said to myself or heard others saying of themselves: “My students aren’t progressing, I’m not a good teacher.” “I can’t get everything done in time, clearly I’m not made out for this.” “I messed up that parent meeting, they probably think I’m an idiot.” “This day was a complete failure, there’s something wrong with me.”

My and the audience’s benevolent view of the boy’s falls was a far cry from the self-critical view we might have of our own adult failures, and this woman knew it. She was pointing out that sometimes after a fall we beat ourselves up emotionally, whereas toddlers tend to just shake it off and try again, undeterred. If we can recognize our defeatist tendency, she noted, and consciously work to change it, we might become a bit more kind toward ourselves (and toward each other), and as a result succeed more often.

Happily for me, during this same time I was just beginning my professional career in Montessori education, teaching and doing administration in an environment where failure is viewed as a natural step in the process to success. (That doesn’t necessarily mean I always successfully applied that principle to myself, but I tried, and continue to try.) For those of us lucky enough to work in Montessori schools, we’re helping to create an educational world where children, and hopefully us adults too, have the opportunity to be comfortable with failure.

For example, in our “Casas” (Montessori classrooms of 3- to 6-year-olds) we include self-correcting materials such as the Pink Tower – which actually ensures children make mistakes – because we know it is the children’s working through such “failures” that eventually allows them to succeed.

picture of boy comforting another boy
©MariaMontessori.com

(Maria Montessori recognized that much of a child’s self-confidence is developed by experiencing success at the end of a long line of errors. Through building the Pink Tower and working with other self-correcting materials, the child comes to learn that in the end – if he continues despite seeming setbacks – he will ultimately succeed.) 

Underlying our work in Montessori education is the goal of aiding children to strengthen (or sometimes to rediscover) a natural comfort with failure. So that, as independent adults years after they’ve left our schools, they will hopefully approach life like that determined toddler, who after every fall just continues, unfazed, until he’s finally standing tall.

One of the most powerful examples I’ve ever seen of this self-determination *in an adult* is a short video of a young woman running a race.

Like the little boy from the conference I attended, she is a reminder not only of what we’re helping to offer the children in our Montessori schools, but also of the personal growth and triumphs we ourselves are achieving as we work alongside them.

Filed Under: Montessori Blog Tagged With: failure, fall, maria, montessori, race, toddler, walk

15 Sep

Transition, Growth, and Charlotte’s Web

Jennifer Rogers by Jennifer Rogers | Montessori Blog
0 Comments
Share

Reading Charlotte’s Web

In a week or maybe two, my husband will finish reading Charlotte’s Web for the fourth time, the first time when he was a child, once for each of our three children. My husband has a low, mumbly voice, and he is often very tired when he sits down in his rocking chair to read at night, but we cherish every word he reads.  Our children greet Wilbur and Charlotte every night like old friends.

E.B. White wrote Charlotte’s Web at the farm in North Brookline, Maine, where he lived with his wife Katherine. They were both accomplished writers, both friendly and well connected to a vast community of authors, but they were private.  White’s will directed the sale of his estate when he died in 1985, a wish his family honored.  The property remains, but is now privately owned.

This summer we drove past the White’s estate. It was a gray, rainy day, but the farm was visible from the road, just the right size for pigs, spiders and sheep, exactly as we had pictured it.  The grandparents who now live there are avid gardeners.  They have preserved and cared for the original buildings, surrounding them with flowers that were still blooming this August.  The farm where E.B. White imagined his characters is bright white.  It is not hard to pick the spot where Charlotte built her web.

Transitions

Soon after her father finishes reading Charlotte’s Web, our youngest child will enter an elementary class for the first time.  She has been a Montessori child since birth, nurtured and guided by people she has loved and trusted through six years of milestones.  Nido, Infant and Primary Montessori communities have been her web, strong and beautiful, her own safe harbor.

©MariaMontessori.com

“The first day of school, it will be hard to walk by my class,” she said as we drove through the farm country of North Brookline, Maine.

“You could ask your brother to walk with you,” I said.  “Would that help?”

“I know the way to elementary, mom.  That’s not the point,” my wise six year old said.  She was looking at the rain fall outside her window, not crying, but there were tears in her eyes. “It’s just going to be hard.”

Growth

Transitions are hard for people, especially for children.  For a child, leaving a place that is familiar, safe and filled with good memories requires courage, even when she knows she is going someplace wonderful.   Our daughter’s point is real, and deep, and personal for parents and teachers who care for children in good homes and schools.

E.B. White’s gift was to describe hard feelings in the language of barnyard animals. The conversations of an aging spider and her best friend, Wilbur the pig, help us understand that grief often precedes growth, and that love and friendship can endure loss.  Our daughter understands that she is leaving the place that has been her home for many years.  We know she will build something magnificent, her own intricate elementary web. Every member of our family will ache a little when she walks past her primary class for the first time, but we know her story continues. Charlotte dies and we weep, but she also lives on.

Filed Under: Montessori Blog Tagged With: charlotte's web, eb white, growth, love friendship, maria, montessori, transition

13 May

The Original One World Schoolhouse

Heike Larson by Heike Larson | Montessori Blog
11 Comments
Share

When you read the following quotes, what learning environment would you guess that the author is describing?

At the end of the day, however, the fact is that we educate ourselves. We learn, first of all, by deciding to learn, by committing to learning. This commitment allows, in turn, for concentration.

Denied the opportunity to make even the most basic decisions about how and what they will learn, students stop short of full commitment.

Students should be encouraged, at every step of their learning process, to adopt an active stance toward their education. They shouldn’t just take things in; they should figure them out. … If you think about it, asking kids to be active is nothing more than asking them to be their natural selves. … Students are not naturally passive. Perversely, they need to be taught to be passive. … Active learning, owned learning, also begins with giving each student the freedom to determine where and where the learning will occur.

Once a certain level of proficiency is obtained, the learner should attempt to teach the subject to other students so that they themselves develop a deeper understanding. As they progress, they should keep revisiting the core ideas through the lenses of different, active experiences.

This kind of learning fosters not only a deeper level of knowledge, but excitement and a sense of wonder as well. Nurturing this sense of wonder should be education’s highest goal; failing to nurture it is the central tragedy of the current system.

To state what should be obvious, there is nothing natural about segregating kids by age. That isn’t how families work; it isn’t what the world looks like; and it runs counter to the way that kids have learned and socialized for most of human history. … Take away this mix of ages and everybody loses something. Younger kids lose heroes and idols and mentors. Perhaps even more damagingly, older kids are deprived of a chance to be leaders, to exercise responsibility, and are thereby infantilized.

©MariaMontessori.com

The author above sounds a lot like another educator, who proposed an approach very similar to the one above:

Education is not something which a teacher does, but [is] a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being. It is not acquired by listening to words, but in virtue of experiences in which the child acts on his environment. The teacher’s task is not to talk, but to prepare and arrange a series of motives for cultural activity in a special environment made for the child.

Discipline in freedom seemed to solve a problem which had hitherto seemed insoluble. The answer lay in obtaining discipline by giving freedom. These children, who sought their work in freedom, each absorbed in a different kind of task, yet all belonging to the same group, gave an impression of perfect discipline.

It follows that the child can only develop fully by means of experience on his environment. We call such experience “work.” … The child who has extended his independence by acquiring new powers, can only develop normally if left free to exert those powers. The child develops by the exercise of that independence which he has gained.

The education of today is humiliating. It produces an inferiority complex and artificially lowers the powers of man. Its very organization sets a limit to knowledge well below the natural level. It supplies men with crutches when they could run on swift feet. It is an education based on man’s lower powers, not on his higher ones.

There are 60 years separating these sets of quotes: the top six are from The One World Schoolhouse, by Salman Khan, the founder of the Khan academy, published in 2012. The bottom four are by Dr. Maria Montessori, in The Absorbent Mind, first published in English in 1949.

I recently read Mr. Khan’s book, and as someone familiar with Montessori, I found it fascinating. It describes, in essence, how we could use technology to more fully apply the principles of Montessori education for the upper grades. I’d go as far as to characterize it as an application of Montessori principles. The problem with that characterization, however, is that throughout the book, Mr. Khan does not mention the Montessori method. Not even a single time!

Salman Khan is perhaps the most famous of the wave of innovation sweeping educational technology.  Mr. Khan’s innovation, however, goes far beyond merely incorporating technology into the classroom. Although made possible by technology, it is at root a pedagogical innovation.  Mr. Khan’s core idea is that we “flip the classroom” from the traditional model. In most schools today, children sit in class, listening to a teacher delivering a lecture, solving sample problems on the board. They are then sent away with homework, and asked to apply what they learned on their own, without either teacher or another student there to help them. In this model, “homework becomes necessary because not enough learning happens during the school day.”

In the classroom envisioned by Mr. Khan, the approach would be reversed: students would independently, individually watch recorded lectures on iPads or other devices. They’d be able to repeat unclear sections, or watch another video that explained things from a different perspective. The iPad, in this approach, would serve to present conceptual level content analogous to the way Montessori materials present perceptual level content in the earlier stages of a Montessori education. Assessment modules on the iPad would allow students to check their basic understanding of the materials, to engage in a first-level application through work of what they have learned. The teacher wouldn’t need to be involved in grading or correcting the work: the computer would be the control of error.

Mr. Khan emphasizes that his computer-based lectures are merely tools for a revolution in the classroom. His descriptions of his ideal school, in fact, sound a lot like what a Montessori adolescent community might look like. Just read these quotes about different aspects of the school he envisions:

I believe that the school of the future should be built around an updated version of the one-room schoolhouse. Kids of different ages should mix. Without the tyranny of the broadcast lecture and the one-size-fits-all curriculum, there is no reason it can’t be done.

But rather than three or four separate classes of twenty-five kids and one lonesome teacher, I would suggest a class of seventy-five to a hundred students with three or four teachers. To me there are several clear advantages to this, all of which stem from the enhancement of flexibility in a system such as this.

[The students] would seldom if ever all be doing the same thing at the same time. And while nooks and alcoves within this imagined school might be perfectly quiet for private study, other parts would be bustling with collaborative chatter. At any given moment, perhaps one-fifth of the students would be doing computer-based lessons and exercises aimed at a deep and durable gasp of core concepts … with one of our team teachers circulating among them, answering questions, troubleshooting difficulties as they occur. The feedback and the help are virtually immediate, and the twenty-to-one ratio is augmented by peer-to-peer tutoring and mentoring—a central advantage of the age-mixed classroom.

But what about the other eighty students? I can see (and hear!) a boisterous subgroup learning economics and trying out market simulations by way of board games such as those we’ve used with good effect at our summer camps. I would have another group, divided into teams, building robots or designing mobile apps or testing out novel ways for structures to capture sunlight. A quiet corner of the room could be devoted to students working on art or creative writing projects. A less quiet corner would be reserved for those working on original music.

The most important aspect of this is that it would carve out space and time for open-ended thinking and creativity for all students. In today’s schools, it’s not hard to find “different-thinking” students who are too often neglected, misunderstood, and either alienated or simply left behind by the rigid standard curricula. I’m talking about the kind of kid … who becomes obsessed with solid geometry and isn’t ready to let I go when the lesson ends, but rather wants to derive its equations and spin out its implications all on his own. Or the kid who is happiest racking her brain over a math problem that might not even have a solution. Or formulating an approach in engineering that has never even been tried.

These are the kinds of curious, mysterious, and original minds that often end up making major contributions to our world; to reach their full potential, however, they need the latitude to follow their own oblique, nonstandard paths.

I believe that a big part of the reason kids revere and obey their coaches is that the coaches are specifically and explicitly on the student’s side. … The teacher, like a coach, needs to emphasize that anything less than mastery won’t do because he or she expects you to be the best thinker and creator that you can be.

Such words are music to a Montessori educator’s ears! There is much more of the same wonderful vision in Mr. Khan’s book, and clearly much his way of re-imagining education has in common with Montessori.

Just think about what could be accomplished if the global reach of Mr. Khan’s technology-based efforts were combined with the world-wide network of mixed-age, co-taught, individualized Montessori classrooms?  Just imagine how much power the practical genius of Mr. Khan could have if embedded in the profound, philosophic account of human development offered by Maria Montessori?

While there are undoubtedly differences in the two approaches, what strikes me most is the similarity of the over-arching vision. It seems to me that Mr. Khan and the Montessori movement are fellow travellers headed in the same direction, but who have yet to find each other. Maybe you, dear MariaMontessori.com readers, can find a way to help make an introduction, and begin a dialogue that has the power to transform the world?

Filed Under: Montessori Blog Tagged With: academy, khan, maria, montessori

21 Dec

Who is the Elementary Child?

John Snyder by John Snyder | Montessori Blog
3 Comments
Share

These astonishing, inspiring, infuriating, delightful, intellectual, affectionate, willful, imaginative, perplexing, energetic, shape-shifting, social, inconsistent, big-hearted, enigmatic, demanding, reflective, dramatic, complicated elementary children of ours:  who are they?  They are like arrows shot from our bow, and if we would understand them, we must look far into the distance where they are aimed:  adolescence.

©MariaMontessori.com

The elementary years are years of vigorous, continual growth, stretched between the two poles of the first and third planes of development.  Building on the foundation – whether solid or shaky – of the first six years, they aim for the heights of adolescence.  Everything that we have a hope of understanding about these elementary children can be understood as a function of three things:  the raw materials of personhood that they bring with them from early childhood; the developmental trajectory toward adolescence; and the quality of the support and protection they have from us along the way.

Adolescence is a supremely social time of life dominated by the work of self-understanding, of orienting oneself in society and history, and of beginning to experience oneself as a power in the world.  Our elementary children are on the way to this and are therefore increasingly social, increasingly independent and competent, and possessed of an increasingly penetrating intelligence.

As Donna Bryant Goertz likes to say, if the First Plane children are like tadpoles, the elementary children are like the frogs into which they were transformed, and to keep a frog in the underwater environment that was right for the tadpole will kill it.  Both guides and parents must dramatically alter their way of working to match the very different needs of the new elementary child before them.

This does not mean that we begin to treat our elementary children as though they were adolescent to “help them grow into it” anymore than we would take a tadpole out of the water to help it get used to breathing.  On the contrary, the needs of the child are just as different from the needs of the adolescent as are the needs of the child under six from the child over six.  Children need for us to be fierce protectors of their childhood, by which I mean protectors of a full six years of safe space and time in which they can run the many social and intellectual experiments, experience the many little and not-so-little failures and successes, and learn the many ins and outs of their maturing bodies and brains that necessarily constitute “growing into it.”

Filed Under: Montessori Blog Tagged With: child, elementary, first plane, maria, montessori, third plane

19 Nov

Matches, Needles and Knives

Donna Bryant Goertz by Donna Bryant Goertz | Montessori Blog
6 Comments
Share

The Foundational Preparation for Car Keys

How does the early introduction of matches, needles and knives prepare our children for the responsibility of car keys at sixteen, eighteen or later? What qualities do we hope for in a young person to whom we hand the car keys?

  • Trust in us, appreciation for our trust of him, confidence that our concerns are real and well-founded;
  • Intention, attention, and responsibility, and at such an early age, for the machine that kills and maims so many each year, and will likely do so to young people he knows well;
  • Concentration, focus and perseverance in holding those;
  • A strong confidence and deep understanding of who he is—that he is capable and skillful and worthy, so that he is not attracted to doing something dangerous to prove himself to his companions

Those are the very qualities we are building into the character of our children in our school by the use of such tools as matches, needles and knives.

First, let’s begin with the introduction of each into the children’s lives in their Montessori community.

Knives: A serrated table knife or other serrated knife with a rounded tip is a standard tool in the Youngest Children’s Community. It is introduced following the child’s mastery of the two-handled chopping blade, which comes first because both of the child’s hands, and therefore fingers, are occupied well above the blade during the chopping process. As safe as this is, it is introduced with an air of caution and a hint of danger. The materials laid out for this activity feature the blade in a specific place, oriented in a specific direction. The strength of the guide’s intention that this is a dangerous tool and must be handled with precision and care is brought to bear. The presentations with the two-handled chopping blade are always given with fullest attention to detail in the lifting, holding, handling and using of the tool as well as its placement on the tray while at rest.

©MariaMontessori.com

When the child is seen to be responsible and skillful with the chopper, he is introduced to activities that include the blunt-tipped, serrated knife. It is more challenging because it has only one handle and that handle is close to the blade. One hand can be kept safe by holding that handle securely away from the blade, but the other hand must be kept safe by placing its palm on the non-cutting edge of the knife and holding all fingers and the thumb curved upwards. To distinguish the non-cutting edge of the knife from the serrated edge, the cutting edge, is not left to observation for a child so young. The non-cutting edge is marked with a thin stripe of red plastic tape. In the activity set, the knife is placed always in the same place and in the same position on the tray. While in use it is always set down in exactly the same place in the same position. The guide does so with utmost attention and intention, conveying with her facial expression her exquisite care and respect for the knife and her recognition of its danger.

In turning the knife over to the child, the adult conveys this approach of seriousness respect and attention. She steps aside and observes to insure that the child is using the knife in this manner and with this attitude.

All of this intention, attention and precision gives the child knowledge of several things:

  • He is trusted by the adults in his life;
  • He is recognized by the adult as capable of keeping himself and others safe through his own self-discipline;
  • He is trusted to remember and persevere in taking great care with a dangerous tool;
  • The adult has confidence and faith in him;
  • He can trust that when the adult says no, there must be a very strong reason because the adult has shown respect by giving him dangerous tools to be used with great care and shown him how to use them;
  • The adult will always do the very best to respect his desire to learn and do if it can possibly be made safe;
  • He can use dangerous tools to carry out dangerous tasks because he has skill and intention.

Needles: At the very end of the Youngest Children’s Community, the child is introduced to the use of a needle. It is blunt but still it is a needle and it is dangerous. The needle is kept in a small wooden cylinder with a tight lid. While in use it is inserted into a pin cushion when set aside for a moment. All the care of manner and method and bearing described above is given by the guide in introducing the use of the needle to the child.

The child moves up to Children’s House and continues to build his skills at using needles and knives. He uses many other tools as well, each posing a new challenge and building his healthy self-esteem. He augments his understanding that he is trusted, worthy, skillful and responsible. Adults will not underestimate him. He need not show bravado in order to prove himself to himself or others. He need not take secret risks, hide his interests from adults or take what has not been presented to him. He will always be taken seriously and prepared to challenge himself when he is interested. He is supported to believe the adult.

When I was a Children’s House guide in the first five years after founding the school, a little girl in our community poked herself with a needle while sewing on a button. She left her work on the table and went round the room showing the children the tiny drop of blood on her finger and telling them to be careful with the needle because look what it could do! It was impressive and I was glad. The children could see that adults could be trusted to show children how to use a dangerous tool and to trust them to take care, even when they could get a safe little hurt, so when an adult said no, there must be a really strong reason.

Matches: In the elementary level, between the years of six and nine, most of the children learn to use a match for birthday candles and science experiments. The guide shows the children how to make themselves safe by rolling up their sleeves high and tight, pulling back their bangs with a head band and their hair with a ponytail holder, and belting their loose shirts and blouses. The matches are kept in a certain way and never opened without having a little dish of water or sand right there at hand. When striking matches children sometimes become panicked and want to throw the match as it suddenly bursts into flames.

Only one match at a time is kept in the striking box. The guide shows the children in a stylized way, slowly and dramatically, how to take out the match and close the box; how to hold the end of the match by the thumb and middle finger; how to support the match up toward the head with the index finger; how to remove the index finger from proximity to the flame as soon as it lights. This is done first with a match that has a burnt-out head. It is practiced over and over until the movement is automatic, programmed into the muscle memory.

Next, the adult shows the child how to light a match, hold it vertical so it is oriented in the direction of the flame, then turn it horizontal so it can be pointed at what is to be lighted, and then put it in the sand or water. When these actions become automatic, set in the muscle memory, it is time for the final step—lighting the candle. If the candle doesn’t catch before the flame gets too close to the child’s fingers, the child puts in into the water or the sand and lights another match. Each match is taken from the supply of matches one by one and put into the striking box.

Once the child can light a candle and snuff it out with a candle snuffer with confidence and ease, he is ready for further challenges. A nice refinement is for the child to learn to blow out the match, which can be quite funny because the first few times the child holds the match in front of him in front of the candle so that when he blows out the match, he also blows out the candle. It takes a few practices for him to remember to turn at a right angle from the candle before blowing out the match. Always the bowl of water or sand is right at hand.

During the elementary years, both early and upper, the child carries out science experiments which are progressively more challenging. In upper elementary the child must pass a science safety test and receive certification before going forward to more challenging experiments.

So, over the long years from Youngest Children’s Community through Children’s House, Early and Upper Elementary, and the Adolescent Program, our children grow confident and capable, strong in their sense of who they are and trusting of the adults who have been their supporters and empowered them along the way. This is the best way to prepare children for the day when we put a set of car keys in their hands. This is the value of matches, needles and knives, and the uses to which we put them!

Filed Under: Montessori Blog Tagged With: candles, car keys, care, danger, freedom, knives, maria, matches, montessori, needles, trust

22 Oct

Weaving the Cosmos

Seth Webb by Seth Webb | Montessori Blog
5 Comments
Share

Imagine a time when our ancestors’ senses were so finely tuned as to keep them constantly alert and watchful and curious; a time when our fossil human relatives had not the distractions or conveniences of today’s world, but lived in and for the moment.

The knowledge housed in their active animal minds was not, could not, be built from experiences held in isolation. Their very survival demanded that they were constantly learning, always making connections between their natural surroundings, their companions, and the rhythms of their own bodies. For these early humans, they were both of the universe and truly in it – that is, living parts of the flowing and changing cosmos.

And then, somewhere in our recent history, these closest of ancient human ancestors developed the intellect and desire to learn more beyond what was necessary to satisfy their most immediate physical needs.

They became conscious.

When a being can cogently reflect upon its own thinking, really exciting things begin to happen: questions emerge, experiments occur, and a sense of place and purpose develop.

Now, some two hundred thousand years or so since our own species first appeared on the planet, we have the chance to purposefully rekindle that ancient way of interacting with the world in our schools.

In how and what we teach, we can share with children their part in – and connection to -the cosmos.

Maria Montessori believed that to teach children was to share with them the fullness of the universe; that it is not solely separate chunks existing independently. Though we are most often housed in linearly designed buildings, we do not have to think, create or teach in boxes. It does not preclude us from creating deeply resonant learning experiences for our students. If anything, such containers highlight the importance of reaching way back, to a way of knowing that involves making connections, and seeing the whole from its parts. Montessori’s approach to teaching, and the integrated curriculum she promoted, is designed to allow for such interplay.

 

That we guide children through truly separate content is an illusion.

 Each strand is connected to the others.

The cultural lessons help to frame and connect the classroom community.

Science…

 …as described by Math and Geometry.

Social Studies…

…as described by Language Arts.

Children recognize the connections between subject areas as avenues are opened to them that allow for self-directed inquiry and exploration, as well as opportunities to demonstrate understanding. Knowledge gained from one set of experiences serves as an asset as the children move on to explore parallel studies. Deliberate exposure to distinguishable works, connected to greater themes, deepens the children’s integration of this holistic perspective.

Juxtaposing content awakens new meanings.

We can create an intentional interplay between the disciplines. We can build authentic learning environments through demonstrating the interconnectedness of it all, teachers and students alike living a thirst and quest for understanding.

 

 

Many strands…

…woven together…

taken as one.

Filed Under: Montessori Blog Tagged With: cosmos, geometry, language arts, maria, math, montessori, science, social studies, weaving

  • Page 1
  • Page 2
  • Next Page »
©2017 MariaMontessori.com - All Rights Reserved.

All photographs and videos appearing on this site are the property of MariaMontessori.com.

They are protected by U.S. Copyright Laws, and are not to be downloaded or reproduced in any way without the written permission of MariaMontessori.com.