My Montessori Child

Well, almost a month into the grind, but it hardly feels that way. In fact, Diego and I are both blossoming under the care of our Montessorian guides. For Diego, he's learning social skills, preschool subjects, and he gets to play with some really cool toys, kids, and teachers. And for me, well, it's almost the same story. The difference between Montessori school and traditional school is incredible. The children at our schools are treated with respect, are honored and listened to, and are eager to learn and participate in activities they choose independently. They are given autonomy within limits, freedom within structure, nurturing within a challenging environment. Diego even came home with a note today that said what a good day he had!
My role as a Teaching Assistant is varied and interesting; often, I marvel at what the kids teach me (inadvertently of course) and also, what I am relearning or learning in a totally new way. Take math, for example. In a Montessori classroom, math is made concrete instead of abstract; you use beads, spindles, rods, or other objects to count each numeric value and the children can actually feel and see how much is one, ten, a hundred. Children in Montessori schools can add, subtract, and count to sums unimagined. Trust me, listening to a child try to count to nine thousand is not something I have the patience to do, but our golden beads and cubes will actually give children a visual idea of how many nine thousand really is!
Something else I really love is the way Montessori kids learn geography. We start by giving them puzzle maps of the world, and then the different continents/countries are broken up individually. Each child begins by tracing the puzzle pieces of the world map, then using a large pushpin to punch around the line they've traced. They wind up with a perforated continent that pops out of the paper, and then is glued in place on their own world map. After tracing, punching, writing each continent's name, then glueing it into place on a large blue paper, I bet they will retain a memory of where each continent is in our world. Much more than simply looking at an atlas, or being forced to memorize by rote. It's kinesthetic, it's visual, it's language based, and it's fun!
The environment in Montessori is totally different than a regular preschool classroom. Rather than a bunch of kids grouped together making the same thing at the same time, there are kids working on many different projects, choosing their own materials and their own work. Often we have soft music playing in the background. Many days, we have a moment of silence on the rug together during "line time". The children take turns sharing what they heard in their hearts when they were being silent. It's the cutest thing you've ever seen. For birthdays, the ritual involves lighting a candle and moving a globe around the lit candle, or "sun", while the children sing and the birthday child is asked to recall what he or she could do each time the earth moved around the sun, and their age changed. Before group snacks and meals, we sing a song about community that is so adorable and so positive that I sometimes tear up!
All in all, we are loving being Montessori children...both of us!