Montessori Flowers

Babies and toddlers need to move!  It is exhausting keeping up with Calvin right now at 17 months.  He might stop for a few moments to listen to a book or use some work from his shelf, but the majority of the time he is on the move.  Dr. Montessori recognized the need for gross motor opportunities  not only for their importance in developing the large muscles of the body, but also in their role in healthy brain development.  Children (and adults for that matter) do not learn optimally when they are sitting and listening, reading, or writing all day.  To engage the whole mind, the whole body must be engaged!  The need for gross motor activities is especially important in the toddler age when children are hitting gross motor milestones and first developing skills such as walking, running, climbing, and jumping. We don't necessarily need to provide specific materials to support a child's gross motor development.  A child looking to pull up on somet...

Should children be required to do housework?  At what age should a child be required to do "chores"?  Trick question!  If a young child (toddler or even younger) is given the opportunity to participate in housework, he will most likely be happy to help! Children want to do what we do.  This is why instead of toys, Montessori classrooms are filled with real-life items.  The practical life area is made up of three main components--care of self, care of environment, and grace and courtesy.  Today I will focus on care of environment!  Dr. Maria Montessori observed that children don't just want to play.  They want purposeful work. When I created Calvin's weaning area, I included a stack of cleaning towels on a low shelf.  A six-month-old is a very messy eater, so in the beginning, I used them constantly to wipe up Calvin's table, chair, and sometimes even the floor and walls around his weaning area. One day when Calvin was around 11 mon...

First of all, when I say weaning I am referring to introducing solid food, not to weaning off of breast milk.  Calvin still nurses at least twice daily at 17 months, and I don't see that stopping any time soon! The weaning process, like all aspects of Montessori, should promote independence.  This is why instead of a high chair, Montessori parents use a baby-sized weaning table and chair.  Once the baby is mobile, he is able to get in and out of the chair by himself.  A stool is placed beside the table for an adult to offer assistance as needed.  We rarely need to sit by Calvin to help anymore. The weaning table: Calvin's table and chair are the TAG Child's First Table and Toddler Chair .  He began using them at 6 months, as soon as we began introducing him to solid food.  Next to the table is a small shelf with bibs and cleaning cloths.  At six months old, Calvin was not yet crawling, so we put him in his chair.  It was not long af...

Calvin has officially moved from his nursery to his "big boy room"!  My dad made the room for him in May.  It was a completely unfinished space before (didn't even have insulation or drywall), and it was a lot of fun creating the space with Calvin in mind.  After the construction was done, I had the fun of completely furnishing and decorating the room.  I have tried to set up the room to promote independence. Within the past few months, Calvin has been spending an increasing amount of time in the room playing and reading.  Last weekend he slept in the room for the first time! Here's a little tour of his new toddler room! Calvin's toddler wardrobe: This is an Ikea Kallax unit that I modified using a hack I saw on Of The Moon and several other Montessori blogs. Four drawers on the left and I left the shelf off the right side and instead installed a tension rod for a toddler-height closet rod!  To start, I am just putting out two shirts for Calv...

I am a Montessori teacher for ages 3 to 6. Enter my (or any Montessori) classroom, and you might be surprised to hear all the vocabulary that the children use. A 5-year-old has mastered the map of Europe and can tell you the name of any country--Norway, Ukraine, Italy. A 3-year-old is beginning work with the geometric solids--sphere, cube, cylinder. A 4-year-old has learned all the parts of an insect--thorax, abdomen, forewings.  Why all the fancy language when so many sources of entertainment, and even education, for young children use simplified language? Dr. Maria Montessori observed the “absorbent mind” of the child ages 6 and under, meaning that they effortlessly absorb all the language around them like a sponge--so why not expose them to as much real language as possible? From before birth, a child benefits from all the language she is exposed to. When I was pregnant I purchased CDs with songs in 9 different languages (from Michael Olaf) to expose Calvin not onl...

In a Montessori classroom, the final step in a child’s cycle of activity is cleaning up the work and putting it back where it belongs. I’ve had parents of three-year-olds in my class who were quite surprised to hear how proficiently their child could put their work back on the same shelf where they found it and roll their rug and return it to the rug basket. One would think that a room full of young children would be a disaster at the end of the day (and trust me, we do have those days), but for the most part the children take care of the classroom and make sure everything is in its proper place. “But why doesn’t my child do this at home?” I have been asked. After doing some thinking about it, I have decided that the main reason is probably too much stuff. For everything to be in its proper place, it first needs to have a specific place where it belongs. This is incredibly hard to do when a child has 500 toys. Perhaps an exaggeration, but I remember the daunting task of cleaning...