Montessori schools support children to develop and educate themselves for independence and interdependence, initiative and effort, collaboration and enlightened competition, self-advocacy and advocacy on behalf of others. Montessori gives children boots with bootstraps to pull themselves up by. Read more »
As opposed to most kindergarten classrooms, Montessori spaces are deliberately serene. They are exquisitely prepared to be esthetically spare. Cartoons are absent. Gaudy colors and designs are nowhere to be seen. The Montessori prepared environment does not impose rowdily upon the child’s senses but rather offers the child a quiet invitation to browse, explore, take an interest, choose, engage fully and enter into a long and deep concentration during a purposeful activity. Read more »
Oh, boy! Watch out. Here it comes, the next assault on our children. When we screw up in providing for them, our children are the ones to suffer the consequences. We know that what they are really suffering has to do with screens, too little sleep and bad nutrition at home and faulty educational practices at school. But instead of addressing these issues, the researchers take the easy route of drugging children. Drug companies love it. Insurance companies pay for it. It’s a quick fix Read more »
Smacking, ostracizing and punishing keeps us chasing our tail in an endless and exhausting loop of human history and our endless revolutions, prisons, and wars. It is time now to break free of the mass murders, serial killings, shooting sprees and genocides. It is time for human evolution and transformation. Through Montessori’s education for peace we can unleash the child’s potential to self-form and self-educate for a new Humanity capable of creating a new Society, one that can evolve Peace.
Oh, boy! Watch out. Here it comes, the next assault on our children. Read more »
This is my letter for last year’s Austin Montessori School yearbook. It’s time for me to write a new one. After reading this letter, I think I’ve said it all. To me, this letter is the best, the most comprehensive statement I can offer. Can you help me by suggesting other points could I make while creating a new letter for this yea’s yearbook?
Yes, the richness of language matters and the number of words counts, but the more educated and more middle class the parents are, the more complicated it gets. When do we speak with our children and how? Why and how this matters is key, and in today’s world of blabber, not obvious. To the contrary, it can be downright confounding. It has to do with the urgency and importance of the child’s cycles of activity. Read more »
And they do the hard things in the preparing, in the setting up, in the doing, in the cleaning up, and in the packing away. And they go from one hard thing that becomes easy to another harder thing. Over and over. What a gift for life; talk about a gift that keeps on giving!
http://montessoriobserver.com/2014/03/01/kingsolver-on-montessori-you-can-do-hard-things/