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We discovered that education is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being. —Maria Montessori The Absorbent Mind, p. 8. I was recently talking to a friend of mine who has three children under the age of seven.  She told me she had been planning a quiet summer with a daily swim at the pool, a few trips to the library, and maybe a few play dates.  She was felt overwhelmed, then, when her seven year old said that sounded fine, but what he was really looking forward to was doing summer homeschool! Ideas for Parents for Montessori Summer Learning - Follow the Child! What Do I Do? Parents often think that our children need some quiet down-time in the summer to rest and renew themselves after a long school year. But we need to remember that they are in their sensitive period for learning! Adults can turn their brains on and off – I work 8–5, Monday through Friday; I learn when I take specific classes; I res...

“If we leave children free in this new kind of environment we have provided, they give us quite an unexpected impression of their nature and abilities. They seem to be happier, and they have such deep interests that they can work for long periods of time without fatigue. As a result, their minds seem to open out and they become eager for knowledge.” — Maria Montessori, The Absorbent Mind , p. 171. The Absorbent Mind Chapter 17: Further Elaboration: Part 1: Acquisition of Culture In Chapter 16 of The Absorbent Mind , Montessori tells us how the child moves from being an unconscious worker to becoming a conscious worker. Chapter 17 further expands these ideas, discussing the sensitive period for cultural language acquisition, the child’s use of imagination, the importance of repetition and precision, and the importance of practical life, sensorial, and mathematical education. So important are each of these ideas, that we will be spending some time addressing them in subsequent blogs. Mon...

“It seems to him, at this stage, a particularly vital matter that everything in his environment should be kept in its accustomed place; and that the actions of the day should be carried out in their accustomed routine.”   – E.M. Standing,  Maria Montessori: Her Life and Work , p. 123 Understanding the Child’s Sense of Order in the Montessori Environment When my son was a toddler, he would line his shoes up just right in his closet. They had to be perfectly straight and even. On his bed, all of his stuffed animals had to be placed in exactly the same spot each morning, and all the trucks and trains had specific ‘homes’ when not being played with. We laughed over his desire to have everything in its place, but he really would get upset if something was out of order. “... nature endows a child with a sensitiveness to order. It is a kind of inner sense that distinguishes the relationships between various objects rather than the objects themselves. … Such an environment provides th...

“Hence there are two tendencies: one is the extension of consciousness by activities performed on the environment, the other is for perfecting and enrichment of those powers already formed. These show us that the period from three to six is one of ‘constructive perfectionment’ by means of activity.” – Maria Montessori, The Absorbent Mind, p. 167 Studying the Works of Montessori - The Absorbent Mind, Chapter 16: From Unconscious to Conscious Worker Up until now, we have looked at the child as a keen but passive observer of her environment. Absorbing all that she can through her senses, the infant obtains knowledge of her environment through sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. While toddlers gain mobility, they are still largely dependent on adults to satisfy their needs. It is also a time of unconscious growth. The child learns to walk and talk without thought. He doesn't wake one day and say, “I think I’ll try to roll over today.” It is something that just happens, often to the...

“We cannot know the consequences of suppressing a child's spontaneity when he is just beginning to be active. We may even suffocate life itself.” — Maria Montessori, The Montessori Method (p. 88) Over the last few weeks we have been looking at equality and achievement in literacy as it relates to gender. We know that during the sensitive period for writing and reading (age 4–6) children spontaneously begin to read. By using the Montessori materials designed for learning to write and form words — the Metal Insets, Sandpaper Letters, and Moveable Alphabet — the child has already had exposure to the sounds of the written word. “Indeed, writing prepares the child to interpret mechanically the union of letter sounds of which the written word is composed.” (Montessori, p. 297) Reading, however, is more than mechanics. It requires fluency and comprehension. The question, then, is how do we keep the enthusiasm of early readers as we move from mechanics to fluency? The Montessori environmen...

“The child has his own laws of development, and if we want to help him grow, it is a question of following these, and not of imposing ourselves upon him.” – Maria Montessori, The Absorbent Mind, p. 162 Around the age of two, the child begins to make great effort physically, mentally, and spiritually. He is doing more than imitating adults. By his actions, he is building the person he is to become. When we intervene, or disrupt, his actions, we are directly interfering with his development. Montessori says that “if his cycle of activity be interrupted, the results are a deviation of personality, aimlessness, and loss of interest.” (Montessori, p. 160) Studying the Works of Montessori - The Absorbent Mind, Chapter 15: Development and Imitation For example, children, says Montessori, need to walk. Walking develops their leg muscles and coordination. It is instinctual to walk and explore both new and familiar places. Unlike adults, children don’t take walks to get places; they walk for th...

“If writing serves to correct, or rather, to direct and perfect the mechanism of speech in the child, reading assists in the development of ideas and language. In brief, writing helps a child physiologically and reading helps him socially.” — Maria Montessori, The Discovery of the Child , p. 230. In 1995, a study was done in by the UK Office for Standards in Education that concluded that girls always out-performed boys by a considerable margin when it came to reading. (Coles & Hall, 2002) The authors, Coles and Hall went on to say that it is now widely accepted that boys have more difficulty with basic literacy than girls. The study also found that girls read more fiction than boys and that girls view reading more positively than boys (59.2% vs. 47.1%). (Coles & Hall, 2002) Gender and Literacy Another study cited by Coles and Hall, called The Children’s Reading Choices Project (1994), compared and quantified children’s reading choices by gender over a period of 25 years. This s...