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Children's Montessori Schooling
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My daughter is seven years old and she has been attending a Montessori school ever since she was three. After two years in a
Montessori preschool and a year in Montessori kindergarten, this year she is in her first year of Montessori elementary schooling.
As a mother, I am convinced that the Montessori style of education is truly a superb one. My husband and
I are planning to keep her in the Montessori environment through elementary school, and possibly beyond as well.
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When my daughter started the Montessori way at three, I knew next to nothing about this style of schooling. It was mostly an accident that we
ended up picking a Montessori preschool for her – being a first time mom I was not on top of my game, and it was late in the spring when I started
shopping for schools. All the schools I knew of and had inquired into were full, and it was impossible to find an opening to register for the upcoming fall.
As things looked bleaker and bleaker finally one day I received a call from a Montessori preschool we were on the waiting list for and
was informed that a family had moved on, we were welcome to come on board if we wished. I was thrilled.
What I was thrilled about this school at that time is somewhat amusing to me, for at that point I had really not yet gotten what a Montessori school
consisted of. All I knew about the Montessori style was that the teachers let the kids guide themselves into the works they
engage in more than the mainstream schools. At the time the biggest part of my happiness came from the impressions I had gathered while I was touring this
particular school. The environment was outstandingly positive: it was very clean and full of light – the classrooms had high ceilings and many
large windows and were set in a rural, natural environment full of trees. They were set up in a very warm fashion; there were a lot of fabric arts on the walls,
and the furniture in the classrooms and works on the shelves were made of high quality materials. There were live plants and pets in all of the classrooms.
They even had a little barn with chicken and rabbits and a couple of goats that the kids fed under the supervision of their teachers. I could not ask
for a better environment for my baby to be in while she was away from home.
So I signed her up for three hours a day; she would be at school from nine in the morning till noon. When fall came I started driving her to school every
day; still not really getting what makes a Montessori school a Montessori school. Over time however, mostly due to the public relations efforts of
the school, I started waking up to it. There were various curriculum nights and other informational nights held for parents where the teachers and the administration
shared who Maria Montessori was and why she designed this style of education the way she did.
By the end of her second year in the Montessori preschool, I was so attracted to the philosophy that I started working as an assistant teacher in the classroom
next to my daughter’s and got to learn what it is firsthand.
Maria Montessori was the first woman physician of Italy, and lived between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. While working in a
psychiatric clinic she became very interested in trying to educate children who were deemed mentally retarded and uneducable. Her efforts were
eventually noticed by the Italian Minister of Education who appointed her as director of an institution devoted to the care and education of the mentally retarded.
Here her observations led to her theories which she put to good use and managed to have the retarded children she was caring for pass the State examination
for reading and writing with above average scores of regular children. She had discovered a way of education that was deemed by some a miracle.
Soon after this she was asked to start a school for children for a housing project in Rome. It was a childcare center in a poor area of Rome. Here she
had the opportunity to observe little children all day long and take note of how their minds work in response to different stimuli. Her goal was to
teach the children how to develop their own skills at their own pace. The childcare initially had toys like dolls for the children’s entertainment, but soon
she noticed that the children were reaching for puzzles and toys that made their minds challenged while leaving things like dolls untouched. Over time she
took out these toys and developed her own materials of teaching simple lessons in a variety of subjects from math to language arts. She observed that the
children were all developing spontaneously while being engaged with materials that engaged their attention for hours on end. Taking their other needs as
well, she soon developed her overall philosophy for education, called the Montessori Method. The Montessori Method soon spread across the oceans and Montessori
schools were opened in many countries ranging from United States to India.
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Here are some of the most striking principles of the Montessori method:
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Maria Montessori grouped children developmentally in three year intervals. She believed that children 0 to 3, 3 to 6, 6 to 9 and so on all required different
environments for optimal learning. The Montessori preschool classroom for example, consists of children 3, 4, and 5 year olds who work together under the same teacher, however they all focus on and work with different materials in the classroom. You can see a three year old working on a simple wooden puzzle right next to a five year old kindergartener doing some basic math while a four year old is washing some vases in soapy water.
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The Montessori classroom is seen as a microcosm of the child’s universe at large. It has a lot of works and activities going on at once corresponding to the developmental level of the children in it. One of the main functions of the Montessori teacher is seen as creating and maintaining a clean, attractive and orderly environment in which a wide variety of works and lessons in language arts, math, science, geography, practical life and so on are available on the shelves waiting for the curious student to reach for.
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Once the calm and stimulating environment is set up, the students lead themselves to the many works waiting on the shelves. To do each work they must first receive a lesson from their teacher to learn how to do it. This is usually a one-on-one lesson, although sometimes there are group lessons as well. Once the child is taught how to do a work, she can reach for it on her own again and again until she masters it. But the key is that in an environment in which there are many many works, the child gets to develop and nourish her own inclinations by leaning toward her favorite works. This is a major difference between the Montessori Method and the cookie-cutter style of mainstream education in which the entire population of the classroom is fed the same lessons at all times regardless of the developmental levels and natural tendencies of the individual children.
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The Montessori classroom is set up differently than the average mainstream classroom. It usually has a homelike feel to it. Little child-sized furniture scattered around the room made up of work tables and chairs, little couches, reading pillows or a large low laying table for group lessons are very typical of the Montessori environment. The child gets to move her body frequently throughout the day as she starts and completes different works available for her on the shelves at different parts of the classroom, reads a book +in small couch or against a soft pillow, or walks over to drink a glass of water or have a little snack when she feels hungry.
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One of the important elements of the Montessori Method is the emphasis given to peace education. Children are taught early on how to communicate constructively about conflicts and resolve them peacefully. In time, this translates to a classroom environment in which children are largely cooperative and supportive to each other where competition is mostly against the self.
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After three years in her Montessori preschool and kindergarten, when it was time to decide if our daughter went to a mainstream or Montessori elementary, the choice was clear to us. It wasn’t any one of the aspects of the Montessori Method that was the deciding factor – it was all of them big and small, in symphony with each other. We wanted our daughter to get as customized an education as was possible. We wanted her to be in environment which is peaceful and stimulating at once. We wanted her to be able to get up and walk around as her body wanted to between different activities, we wanted her to be able to have a snack or drink of water when she needed to throughout the day. We wanted her to have one-on-one lessons as well as group lessons. We wanted her to approach learning naturally as any other thing arises in her world which makes her excited. So far, we feel very good about our choice.
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