How was your day? Getting your child to open up to you

How was your day? Getting your child to open up to you

Does this sound familiar?
“How was your day?” … “Fine.”
“What did you do at school?” … “Nothing.”

It can be hard to get children to open up about what’s going on in their world, especially after a long day at school. Here are a few different communication strategies you can try. Find ones that work best for your family and then practice until they become part of your daily routine. This process takes time but can lead to more satisfying conversations in the long run.

Strategies to Try:

Wait at least a half an hour
After a long day at school wait at least 30 minutes to trying to engage in a conversation. Give your child a chance to take off the backpack, relax, and have a snack.

Ask open-ended questions
“Do you have homework?” or “Did you give your speech?” are questions that only invite a yes or no response. So try to pose open ended questions. Get creative! (There is a list of examples below.)

Be present
The moment your child starts to engage in conversation, stop what you are doing, and give your full attention. It can be hard to tear yourself away from what you’re doing to focus on a child’s question or comment, but your response can either encourage or shut down the conversation. Don’t forget to look interested!

Listen! And stretch the conversation…
Don’t talk, listen! Try comments like “Really?” “Uh-huh?” “I don’t believe it!” “Wow!” to stretch the conversation. They are non-threatening and invite the child to open up. You can also reflect back what the child is saying so they know you understand, and then be quiet so they can talk more. Child: “I played on the swing.” You: “You played on the swing.” The trick is to repeat the tidbit in a matter-of-fact but interested way to get your child to open up and add more.

Try to listen without judgement
Pushing, prodding, demanding, coaxing, lecturing, and threatening are sure ways to end conversations. Questions that begin with “Why” often make kids defensive. “Why did you wear that?” won’t work nearly as well as, “What do you think most of the kids will be wearing to the theater?”

Resist the urge to jump in with solutions and advice
Your child needs a chance to vent and can’t hear advice until she does. Then she needs a chance to figure out her own solutions, which is how she develops confidence and competence. When we can reflect feelings and then help children brainstorm solutions, kids find us more useful to talk to — and they’re more likely to seek us out when they have problems.

Take advantage of indirect communication
Kids often open more in the car, on a walk, or in the dark — all times when eye contact is limited. Remember that these are great times to get kids talking. Another opportunity for indirect communication is when their friends are over or in your car. Just keep quiet and listen. Your child knows you’re there, of course, but often is more willing to talk than if you were speaking directly.


Questions a child might answer at the end of a long school day:

What made you laugh today?
Did anything silly happen?
Did anyone do anything super nice for you?
What is the nicest thing you did for someone else?
Was there an example of unkindness? How did you respond?
What games did you play at recess?
Does everyone have a friend at recess?
Who did you sit with at lunch?
Who do you want to make friends with but haven’t yet? Why not?
Did you help anyone today?
Did you tell anyone “thank you?”
Who inspired you today?
What is something that surprised you?
What is something that challenged you?
What made you feel proud?
How were you brave today?
Will you teach me a song you learned at school?
What was your least favorite part of the day?
Tell me something good (or three!) that happened today.
What are you looking forward to tomorrow?

Do you have a teenager? Huffington Post has some great ideas about starting the conversation with your teenage children. Take a look here – https://www.huffingtonpost.com/liz-evans/28-ways-to-ask-your-teens-how-was-school-today-without-asking-them-how-was-school-today_b_5751546.html

If you are interested in learning more about Greenspring Montessori School, please click here to request more information.

Peace Education for All Ages

Peace Education for All Ages

Written by Margaret Jarrell, former Greenspring Elementary Guide

The child is capable of developing and giving us tangible proof of the possibility of a better humanity. He has shown us the true process of construction of the human being. We have seen children totally change as they acquire a love for things and as their sense of order, discipline, and self-control develops within them…. The child is both a hope and a promise for mankind.” – Dr. Maria Montessori

Peace education is a major component of the Montessori classroom. Maria Montessori saw the education of young children as the human race’s opportunity to recreate itself in a way that would eliminate war. As with most things, Dr. Montessori did not think that meant children needed to be lectured on the subject, but rather that they needed to be given an opportunity to discover peace for themselves. Adults model peaceful and respectful behavior, and because Montessori classrooms are composed of mixed age groups, older students serve as role models for younger children.

We start building conflict resolution skills with our youngest students. Most classrooms have a peace corner or peace table, at which two students can go to resolve a conflict or a single child can go to calm down and feel peaceful. One strategy is the use of a peace rose. Children learn to take turns holding the peace rose while speaking about how they feel. They stay at the peace table until they have heard each other and resolved their conflict. With very young children, adults model and coach the children with words they can use. Older students can do this independently.

At the Elementary level, “community time” is set aside to help establish a sense of responsibility and place within the group. Students encourage and acknowledge one another. They also help establish rules of conduct for the classroom and the playground. These meetings are student-led and a forum in which conflicts are discussed, brainstormed, and resolved as a group. Role-playing and discussion can be helpful in finding ways to handle challenging situations.

Once students enter our Adolescent Community, they begin exploring questions like, “Are all humans created equal?” and “What brings humans together into groups?” These questions are taken very seriously and are never assumed to have simple answers. We help adolescents seek insight by looking at world history, at the differing cultures of the world’s people, and at the interactions between humanity and the environment. Perhaps most importantly, we think about how future history might be written in a way more in keeping with the harmony that seems possible between people and the world, or between one group of people and the next.

Peace is also, essentially, a habit that Montessori students learn. Lessons in Grace and Courtesy teach our students the habit of viewing and treating others with respect, and then to continue to try to forge understandings where they encounter conflict. Young students practice simple lessons such as how to greet others, say please and thank you, tuck in chairs. Elementary students may practice introducing themselves or the etiquette for making a telephone call. And Adolescents may send thank you letters to experts who have helped them along the way. These lessons are present in Montessori classrooms from such an early age that the habits they create become as natural to our students as using a spoon, or putting on shoes.

At the core of these lessons is respect for others, self, and the environment. Montessori students engage in community service at every level – within the classroom for youngest students and outside the classroom and the school for older students. We encourage our students to be involved by asking, “How can we help others?” This can begin with caring for the environment, such as weeding and sweeping public areas. It can also take the form of volunteering to help others in our school. For example, Lower Elementary students may participate in a campus-wide recycling project. Upper Elementary students may tend community gardens and Adolescents are serving others lunch as a part of the micro-economy. It also involves thinking about the needs of others. Our students often remind each other, “We must be quieter. The toddlers are sleeping next door!” 

The benefits of peace education are not just altruistic, but eminently practical. Most adults who have navigated the many changes to the world (or even just the job market) in the last several years have had reason to think about how much more connected everything seems to be getting – countries thousands of miles away can be regular business partners in ways that they might not have a decade or two ago, and people are truly mobile on a global scale for the first time in our planet’s history.  Prejudice in favor of one’s own tribe – whether that tribe is formed by religion or geography or your school’s alumni association – has become more and more counterproductive to operating in a world where diversity cannot be avoided and is to be celebrated.

Peace is an amazing concept, a useful tool, and, through Montessori education, an attainable goal. Children are born with innate instincts toward compassion and the practice of compassion becomes ingrained when cultivated over time. Montessori students develop into involved citizens!

“Within the child lies the fate of the future.” -Dr. Maria Montessori

The Uninterrupted Work Cycle

The Uninterrupted Work Cycle

Written by Margaret Jarrell, former Lower Elementary Guide

“The mind takes some time to develop interest, to be set in motion, to get warmed up into a subject, to attain a state of profitable work.  If at this time there is interruption, not only is a period of profitable work lost, but the interruption, produces an unpleasant sensation which is identical to fatigue.” – Dr. Maria Montessori

In many traditional classrooms, students move through a series of subject periods, in which they must start and stop their work on a given subject according to a predetermined schedule. Can you imagine the frustration you would feel if fully immersed in a task, deep in concentration, and were suddenly jarred out of your thoughts by the ringing of a bell? You were just about to make a breakthrough? Too bad! It’s on to the next subject. This is not how the real world works and it is also not how children learn best.

  

So what is the alternative? Dr. Montessori discovered that children as young as three are able to choose productive and challenging work, focus on the task at hand, finish a cycle of work, rest without interrupting those who are working, and repeat this sequence. The three-hour, uninterrupted work cycle allows students to freely choose work and engage in work more thoroughly. Based on her experiences observing children during an uninterrupted work period, Dr. Montessori wrote: “Each time a polarization of attention took place, the child began to be completely transformed, to become calmer, more intelligent, and more expansive.” In other words, children are able to develop better concentration skills and focus through undisturbed work.

Some parents might worry: “Won’t my child get tired of working?  Doesn’t he need a break every 45 minutes or so?”  In fact, Montessori students do take breaks – they are free to get a drink of water or use the bathroom as the need arises. They may choose to have a snack, stand up and stretch, or observe another student’s lesson. But regarding external interruptions of work, Dr. Montessori wrote, “A great variety of interesting research has been made into the question of change of work with identical results – namely, that frequent change of work causes greater fatigue than continuous work of one kind, and that a sudden interruption is more fatiguing than persistence.” Once the child’s concentration is broken, it is very difficult to try to engage them to the environment once again. Angeline Stoll Lillard, author of Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius, writes, “If we choose when to take breaks, then breaks work for us, but if the timing is externally imposed, breaks can be disruptive to concentration.”

  

Interestingly, there is a natural ebb and flow to children’s concentration during a three-hour period. Research on children in Montessori classrooms shows that after about 1.5 hours, there is a tendency for students begin to lose focus. Montessori educators call this “false fatigue.” Montessori guides don’t panic and send the students outside to run a few laps. We find instead that after ten to fifteen minutes of aimlessness, a student will redirect herself to a new activity in which she will become engaged at a heightened level of concentration, sometimes for as long as an hour. The student’s most meaningful work often takes place in the second half of the work cycle.

Lillard points out that, “Montessori teachers who adhere to three-hour work periods without interruption claim one can see the difference in the quality of the children’s concentration on days when children know they will be leaving the classroom in an hour for a field trip or doctor’s appointment or special music class.” Children who know they will soon be interrupted choose unchallenging “busywork” at best, and at worst become distracting to their peers.  When children who don’t know an interruption is coming, they choose demanding work, become engrossed, and are understandably upset when the disruption takes place.

We want to give our children the opportunity to learn at their own pace, allowing them to concentrate and focus on the task at hand in an uninterrupted, peaceful environment. As Montessori guides, we follow the child’s schedule, not ours. One of the best gifts we can give our children is the opportunity to fully develop their concentration and independence, free from unnecessary adult interruptions.

Parent Challenge: Do an experiment. The next time you see your child deeply engaged in an activity, make a concerted effort not to interrupt your child’s concentration. Make a note of how long she persists with one task. The results may surprise you!

      

Learn more about the Greenspring Montessori School Elementary Program.

Science in the Montessori Classrooms

Science in the Montessori Classrooms

Montessori Science - Greenspring Montessori School

“There’s no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing” –Alfred Wainwright

In education today, there’s a forward momentum towards STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). There are robotics clubs, programming camps, and circuitry courses. We want our children to enter the world prepared in math and science. However, if you look to the natural world, there are so many ways for your child to become a natural scientist and mathematician.

The etymology of “science” comes from the Latin scire, “to know”, and etymologists note that it probably originally meant “to separate one thing from another, to distinguish.” Yet, in our natural world, there is so much to know, to distinguish, that has fallen through the cracks in the education of our youth, and perhaps even ourselves. In the Montessori classroom, distinguishing and classifying starts in the Children’s House, in practically every subject area. This practice not only helps the child to fine tune their observation skills and hone in their level of concentration, but the child is organizing and classifying information in their brain.

Montessori Science - Greenspring Montessori School

In the Elementary classroom, children continue to use their observational and analytical skills to study, classify, and understand the distinguishing characteristics of the natural world. Elementary children are provided a high level introduction to this field of study. For instance, in botany and zoology, the child learns how each organism lives and what satisfies that organisms needs. Then the child learns about the function and parts, such as the function of limbs, skin, or leaf to that particular living organism. At this point, the child may explore variety. This exposure to variety is what impels the child to classify. A leaf is not merely a leaf, but a maple leaf – or even distinguished further, a red maple. Nor is a feather just a feather, but that very plain, brown feather is a bald eagle feather. By learning and practicing this skill, the child is practicing scientific observation.

Montessori Science - Greenspring Montessori School

In the Adolescent Community, the child explores science and nature through Occupations Studies. Occupations is essentially a study of the land and offers the student a chance to apply scientific concepts such as soil and water chemistry, botany, and microbiology to agricultural practices. The Adolescent Community is committed to the study of the environment and science studies focus on environmental ethics, conservation, and renewable energy. The child conducts their own science experiments and writes full lab reports to explore cause-and-effect relationships. This serves as a means to be fully connected with wanting to distinguish, to know, more about our world.

In order to fully experience science, and even more, love it, the child needs to be in constant connection with the outdoors. No matter the weather, no matter the season, experiencing nature is the best complementary experience to teaching STEM. Pick up a child friendly field guide at a local used book store. Find an even more detailed one for yourself. Then explore – together. Your children will ask the most amazing, inquisitive questions – and you’ll be there with them, modeling scientific observation and inquiry.

 

To learn more about Montessori education, please visit us.

Montessori is Education for the Real World

Montessori is Education for the Real World

Montessori As Preparation for the “Real World,” written by Lower Elementary Lead Guide, Cheri Gardner

In Montessori classrooms, we don’t insist that our students sit at desks all day, do the same work that everyone else does, or stop doing things they’re immersed in because a bell rings. Parents unfamiliar with Montessori often say, “That sounds great, but how does Montessori prepare children for the ‘real world?’”

We ask these parents to consider that traditional educational methods were developed during the industrial revolution when students were being trained for work in factories. Students needed to learn how to walk in lines, follow directions, memorize procedures, and start and stop work at the signal of a bell. This is clearly no longer the world in which we live or work.

Teaching for the Real World - Greenspring Montessori School

So what skills are needed to succeed in the “real world” today? Success in the global economy comes from the ability to think, show ingenuity, and take purpose-driven action. Success comes from working cooperatively with others – as well as by oneself. Success comes from the ability to both define and solve the problem. Success results when we persevere in the face of difficulty, and keep trying even when our first (and second, and third!) attempts are failures. Success comes when we have the desire to make a significant contribution.

Daniel Pink, author of Drive and A Whole New Mind, said, “Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another. And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and richer lives. Maria Montessori figured this out a long time ago.”

Teaching for the Real World - Greenspring Montessori School

The structured freedom of the Montessori environment fosters the development of inner discipline, responsibility, and intrinsic motivation. The collaborative nature of the Elementary Montessori classroom challenges students to both advocate and empathize, listen and lead, visualize and reflect – all real world skills that will serve them for a lifetime. With a strong foundation in methods supported by scientific research, Montessori education has a clear record of success in preparing students for high school, college, and adulthood.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, explicitly credit Montessori with their success. “We both went to Montessori school,” Mr. Page said, “and I think our success was part of that training of not following rules and orders, and being self-motivated, questioning what’s going on in the world, doing things a little bit differently.”

So we declare proudly, Montessori IS education for the real world!

The Benefits of Learning Cursive Writing

The Benefits of Learning Cursive Writing

“Learning cursive is good for children’s fine motor skills, and writing in longhand generally helps students retain more information and generate more ideas. Studies have also shown that kids who learn cursive rather than simply manuscript writing score better on reading and spelling tests, perhaps because the linked-up cursive forces writers to think of words as wholes instead of parts.” – Katy Steinmetz, Time Magazine

Elementary Cursive Writing - Greenspring Montessori School

A sample of early cursive writing from a Lower Elementary (first grade) student at Greenspring Montessori School.

At Greenspring Montessori School, we have extended our commitment to teaching cursive writing to our Children’s House students. Starting at age 3, students now have access to cursive sandpaper letters, cursive name tags, and lessons on cursive handwriting.

Teaching Cursive Writing - Greenspring Montessori School

It been proven that cursive writing engages more of the brain and helps students become better at spelling. As they are writing, children are able to slow down and focus on the precision, allowing them to think about what they are trying to say, instead of simply copying letter for letter. Our Children’s House guides look out for signs that an individual student is ready to begin learning cursive, as they also work on their print handwriting.

Teaching Cursive Writing - Greenspring Montessori School

True to the Montessori model, our guides teach to the individual child. We know our students learn in different ways and at different speeds. In any one of our Montessori Children’s House classrooms, the students are spread about working on all kinds of different activities that interest them. If a student, for example, is drawn to the cursive sandpaper letters, the guide may give the child a lesson on the different parts of the letters, or on spelling out words using the large tangible pieces. If they are working on their pencil grip, the guide may suggest they try a word they know in cursive.

By the time the child enters Lower Elementary, they are working on the precision of their handwriting, creating more elaborate writing pieces to express themselves.

Want to learn more about our emphasis on cursive writing? Please contact us at inform@www.greenspringmontessori-b.dev.


 

Here are a few more articles and resources on cursive writing:

5 Reasons Kids Should Still Learn Cursive Writing,” Time Magazine.

Ten Reasons People Still Need Cursive,” The Federalist.

What’s Lost as Handwriting Fades,” The New York Times.