Montessori Community School loves the passion our students have toward caring for our earth. They help with keeping our grounds clear of trash, working in our gardens, composting, and planting raised garden beds. Our students also implement and are responsible for recycling throughout our school. We try very hard to make our school and community a greener place.
The holidays have come and gone and spring is just around the corner. This might be a fine time to consider sorting through your children’s possessions. If you take a close look at the sheer volume of your child’s books and toys, you may determine that just like adults he uses only a percentage of them.
Thinning the herd, so to speak, offers much to recommed it; Its a lot easier to find things if there are fewer things to find.
A place for everything and everything in its place is a cliche’ based on sound thinking. Our brains seek order, harmony and beauty in the world, your child’s brain seeks it out too.
Additionally, there’s an essential developmental incentive to clear the clutter out of your child’s life. Providing external order for your child allows him to organize his thinking. He’s already taken in so many impressions of the world and now he is categorizing, sorting, grading and matching all these impressions. (cognitively grasping same and different as well as one-to one correspondence are pre-math and pre-reading skills.) It’s confusing, harder to make sense of everything when, right here in his room the crayons are randomly hanging out with the dolly blanket and Tonka truck wheel, if you will.
So here are some strategies you might consider:
Here are a few more considerations:
Your child wants to, and for his optimal development needs to be responsible for his own possessions. Make sure that he can put every toy away where it belongs. Don’t make the tub for the blocks so heavy he can’t move it into place himself. Is there a home for his trains? Bags, totes and backpacks all deserve wall hooks hung low enough for your child to hang up by himself.
You probably already have a child-size table and chairs. A child-sized rocker and/or a reading chair might be nice. How about an easel for chalking, painting and drawing? Generally, the younger the child, the more he wants to make large sweeping circular arm motions. You might even consider getting some butcher-block paper for large mural creation.
Sibling fights can be minimized if each person in the family, no matter the age has personal property rights. If your five year old doesn’t want to share some of his toys with your toddler, I suggest that that is his right. However, you might work with your five year old to go through some of his possessions and together determine which toys he might be willing to share. Further, many of his no-longer-used toys can be ceremoniously bequeathed to his younger sibling. His most prized possessions, however, should have a place in his room.
Every activity (just like life) has a beginning, middle and end. Teach your child how to get something out, use it in the place designated for its use and then put it away. If he moves on to the next thing before putting the last activity away, you can say, “in this house, we always put our belongings away.”
And finally, the most effective way to gain his cooperation is to model what you teach. Maybe it’s time for some spring cleaning of your own.
Written by Donohue Shortridge
Donohue, a Montessorian since 1980 speaks and writes on topics related to children and their families in the American culture. pds@pdonohueshortridge.com
What do we mean when we say we want to raise “successful” children? Too often, especially around this time of year, that conversation centers on college or the kinds of academics and activities that lead to college. “Success” is hard to measure, and those external markers make for comforting milestones along the way.
Comforting, but dangerous. Because when checking off the achievement box is what defines success, it’s too easy to forget that it’s the qualities in our children that might lead to those accomplishments that matter — not the goals themselves.
Achievements, from the A on the science project to the letter of acceptance from Big U, can be the gold stars for parents. They’re the visible signs that we’re doing something right, and that makes it tempting to push our children forward, just a little (or maybe a lot) by stepping in when it looks as if they might not quite get there on their own. The working model of the water cycle was her idea; we just “helped” build it. She did the algebra homework; we just corrected it. He wrote the essay; we just added some structure to the argument.
By KJ DELL’ANTONIA
APRIL 9, 2015
This year, our Spring Campers did an in-depth study of the moon. Camp started out with the history of the moon. Students learned about how the moon formed and how the moon and the ocean relate. Next, students learned about the phases of the moon, making a phases of the moon viewer and doing a light and shadow experiment.
Each day the students have done amazing, creative art projects, crafts, and experiments revolving around the moon. When students learned about spacecraft, they made and launched rockets outside. They also watched the first landing on the moon.
Next came a day of learning about astronauts. They learned about what a space suit and space food is like and why. Students created their own space packs and enjoyed pretending they were on the moon and cruising around in space.
The last day of camp featured the surface of the moon. Students learned about moon rocks, mountains, and craters. They also learned about what the absence of gravity means. Students were able to create their own moon sand and make textured paintings of the moon. We would love to thank all the teachers and staff who worked during camp and made it such a success. We would also love to thank the students who came, explored, and created such a wonderful atmosphere and brought such an enthusiasm to this past week.
“Our aim is not only to make the child understand, and still less to force him to memorize, but so to touch his imagination as to enthuse him to his innermost core.” – Maria Montessori
Lastly, a special thank you goes to our Spring Camp Director, Ms. Corey Day. Thank you for planning and implementing such a creative, fun, educational, and organized Spring Camp. Your skills and talents are unmatched. We are blessed to have you.
To close our Winter Sports season, Brighton Resort would love to host an MCS Family Ski Day. Tickets are at a reduced rate and can be purchased from the MCS Office. When purchasing your tickets, please ensure to make checks out to MCS.
“Children will be smarter, better able to get along with others, healthier and happier when they have regular opportunities for free and unstructured play in the out-of-doors.”
—American Medical Association, 2005
Spring has arrived! I can’t help but be excited by the thought of sunshine, hikes, water and fresh air! This article written by Jane M. Jacobs, M.A., a Montessori Educational Consultant at Montessori Services spoke to me in considering how outdoor time is such a powerful tool for our children. In the article, Jane offers a variety of ideas for making the best of your outside time with your little one.
Enjoy!
Were you told to “go out and play” when you were a child? Now, as a parent, do you give your children the same instructions? Perhaps not, but even for the urban, over-scheduled family, there are ways to give our children more opportunities to explore the outdoors.
For centuries it was common wisdom that children needed several hours of outdoor activity daily. As Dr. Benjamin Spock said, “It’s good for a baby (like anyone else) to get outdoors for two or three hours a day.” Some say we now suffer from “nature deficit disorder.” Children spend more and more time indoors with bright toys, beeping computer games, and flashing screens. A more contemporary pediatrician, Harvey Karp, similarly tells us that “there are exhaustive studies showing that time outdoors, particularly in nature, benefit us in myriad ways… while staying inside is over-stimulating and at the same time boring for children.”
Click here to read entire article.
Spring cleaning? It’s that time again to bring in all of your children’s gently used clothing that is too small, or unworn and swap it for something that fits. Please drop off your gently used items in the bins located in the MCS gymnasium. You may drop off items March 16th – March 20th.
Then, during school hours, March 26th and March 27th, you may come browse the tables in the gym. Clothes will be separated into size and style. If you are looking for volunteer opportunities, please contact the office, as the Green Committee would love help sorting, folding, and displaying the clothes.
Your child’s education in Montessori is different – so different that it makes you shake your head in wonder and say, “Is this something my child is really learning?” As parents we want our children to excel at reading, writing and math. Yet their Montessori education leads them through strange and esoteric materials. (At least they are foreign to most adults.)
Why would a three year old need to be versed in geometry? Fine, a nice circle, a square and maybe a triangle but what purpose for an isosceles triangle, parallelogram or a rhombus? Then if that is not enough esoteric learning, your child moves on to the botany cabinet. How many three year olds need botany? They are introduced to leaf forms like spatulate, orbiculate, sagitate and reniform. Most of us adults can’t even pronounce them let alone know what they are.
If that is not enough diversity in the curriculum, Montessori education then introduces them to the whole world of art. They meet Picasso, Monet and Rembrandt. What in the world was Dr. Montessori thinking? And where is the math and reading?
There is a unique method (no it is not madness) in this approach. Your child is absorbing a tremendous amount of learning and stimuli and beginning to gain the skills of observation and visual discrimination – which is the ability to see differences. The Montessori child is effortlessly gaining a lifetime skill – the ability to see. Yes, we are born with sight but sight is passive where all the images come to us. When we observe, we actively focus our sight. But even focusing our sight does not always let us see what is there. For example, we have all seen pictures that if you look at them long enough the image changes into something else – like the two faces and the goblet or the old woman and the young girl. Skills and even talents need to be trained and refined. A Montessori classroom provides an unending panorama of activities that train and refine the ability “to see”.
Though education is primarily reading and math based, life is about having a clear vision of what is present (and what could be). And though the introduction to geometry (rhombus), botany (reniform) and art (Rembrandt) is rudimentary, it is absolutely foundational to clear-eyed success. For your child everything is new and exciting. To be able to put a name with a form or a shape not only gives great intellectual satisfaction but is the beginning of power to organize, define and categorize the world that is seen.
Enjoy the voyage of discovery as your child, with bright new eyes, sees the world for the first time. It is this power of visual discrimination that gives strength and focus to the power to read. It is also this power that breaks the world of math into distinguishable pieces with the ability to see patterns and processes.
Montessori truly gives your child the gift of sight!
Edward Fidellow
Please find Spring Camp registration forms on the credenza by the stairs in the lobby. Spring Camp will run Monday, March 30th – Friday, April 3rd.
During Spring Camp, the students will learn all about the moon! Please look over the daily schedule above.
Download the forms here: