I love it when the seasons switch. I love, love, love preparing the environment of our classroom. I was blessed to be an assistant to an amazing Children’s House Guide years ago, and she showed me the incredible value that tweaking materials seasonally has on a child. Every season, she would swap out the baskets … Read more
“The exercises of practical life are formative activities, a work of adaptation to the environment. Such adaptation to the environment and efficient functioning therein is the very essence of a useful education.”-Maria Montessori If you walked into a Montessori classroom, you would see many children going about their work. Some would be doing counting, some … Read more
Sitting back and observing the child without intervening doesn’t come naturally to most adults, but it is a cornerstone of the Montessori method, and for me at least, the more I step back and watch my children as they work, the more I am amazed at what they discover. When they make their own discoveries, … Read more
“It follows that the child can only develop fully by means of experience on his environment. We call such experience “work”.”- Maria Montessori (The Absorbent Mind) First let me say that our children are incredibly blessed to have grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, and uncles who support their education and make homeschooling possible for our family. Our … Read more
Last night I found Gianna in the bathroom filling a candle with my skincare products and toothpaste. In a (rarer than I would like) moment of good parenting, I took a beat before speaking and instead of saying a sharp “Gianna Rose!”, I calmly sat down and said it looked like she was working on … Read more
Last year I was starting to feel very pinched in our little house. I was dying to introduce more Montessori into the kids’ lives, but we just didn’t have the space. One night as I was lamenting about this to Mark, he suggested turning part of our unfinished basement into a classroom. Every night for … Read more