Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service is the only federal holiday observed as a national day of service — a “day on, not a day off.” This day of service helps to empower individuals, strengthen communities, bridge barriers, address social problems, and move us closer to Dr. King’s vision of a “Beloved Community.” While we will not be able to offer a community service project as we did last year due to COVID-19, we encourage families to participate in service projects at home!
Write letters or record videos to share with a nursing home or assisted living facility
Collect diapers, wipes, and baby items for ShareBaby
Offer to help an elderly neighbor with projects around the house
Organize a stream or park clean up
Sew masks for healthcare workers
Toddlers fill care bags for Catholic Charities in January 2020. Even young children can get involved by sorting and filling bags.
The Washington Post recently published an article on children volunteering during the pandemic. In the article, Connie Chang states, “When so much is out of our control, the act of volunteering puts some control back in our hands. And with the normal rhythms of life still very much disrupted, it’s a good way to occupy and engage children who might otherwise feel stuck.” She goes on to talk about different ways that children can get involved in service – at home, virtually, and outdoors.
Now more than ever, it is important that we instill in our children a love of service to others and a dedication to community. Service and stewardship is a fundamental component of Montessori education throughout the year. In our classrooms, children contribute to their peers, their environment, and their community through our Grace and Courtesy curriculum. On any given day, a Toddler may be sweeping up a mess or watering a plant; a Children’s House student may be feeding fish or comforting a classmate; Lower and Upper Elementary students are learning ways to meaningfully engage with one another through jobs in the classroom and community meetings; children in our virtual classes are navigating respectful online presence and building community while apart. Still, there are many students who are missing the more hands-on service work they did pre-COVID. We’ve collected resources for families and children who would like to get involved with service projects outside of school while remaining socially distant.
A family participates in our home items drive during the 2020 Service Day.If you are looking for additional ideas on ways to get involved, please take a look at the following links:
Is your family participating in a service project for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day? Take a photo and share it with us at community@greenspringmontessori.org!
For our students Learning from Home, the connection to the natural world around them is still alive and well. An understanding of the natural world plays a major role in all Montessori classroom, and it has been our big work to bring this curriculum to our students in a digital classroom as well.
“There must be provision for the child to have contact with nature, to understand and appreciate the order, the harmony and the beauty in nature… so that the child may better understand and participate in the marvellous things which civilization creates.”
– Dr. Maria Montessori
Children’s House
In our Tillandsia class, the children were introduced to the parts of a plant, which led to many questions about plants, botany, and our earth. As we learned about the parts of the leaf, we looked at some real plants to understand how the leaf is connected to the whole plant. Why do we care about the midrib and veins? Because they carry water up to the leaf all the way from the roots! Why do we care about the blade? Because its flat shape acts like a solar panel to absorb sunlight! Why do we care about the petiole? Because it can TWIST the blade to face the sun! Why do we care about the stipules? Because they STOP the flow of water through the plant when it starts getting cold outside. What would happen if a plant tried to drink up frozen water? Why is the leaf green? Why does it lose its green color? We have been exploring all these questions in our ongoing study of leaves.
The children have also been making so many globes and maps of the world. Some are creating these maps from memory, and some have chosen to label every country on our continent. We just started exploring the flags of North America, and learned about the United States flag first. Some children chose to create a flag to celebrate their favorite animal, their family, a group of friends they are missing, their neighborhood, or their bedroom! They chose what colors would represent what, and what shapes could be included. Some children added chopstick or popsicle stick flagpoles so they could wave their newly created masterpiece.
Lower Elementary
As always happens at the beginning of the year in the Elementary classrooms, we have begun telling many of our Great Stories. These are stories meant to capture the imagination of the children at the beginning of the year, in addition to opening their eyes to the different disciplines we offer in the Elementary classroom.
Recently, we told the story of The Coming of Life. We spoke about how all the elements in the universe were following their laws, including the elements on earth. The Sun, the Rocks, the Water, and the Wind play as characters in this story, and in order for these four characters to continue following their laws in harmony, life was created. We talk about the first life form probably looking like a microscopic jelly, through the evolution of life in water, to out of water, to dinosaurs, all the way to humans and life as we know it now. Stemming from these Great Lessons, there are many opportunities to learn about chemistry, physics, biology, history, and so much more. There was an interesting hands-on lesson for the children on density and particles that involved water, oil, and honey. These early lessons have sparked an interest among the students to study space and volcanos.
Upper Elementary Elementary
Our Upper Elementary students are in a hybrid class with some students Learning from Home and others on campus in the classroom. This group also began the year with our Great Stories. Each year, as the children get older, they discover new details in the Great Stories that spark their interests in a variety of fields. One of the lessons stemming from these Great Stories was the parts of a river. Outside on campus, Mr. Brad demonstrated to the students how water travels through a valley, carving a river.
Learn More About Our Programs!
If you are interested in learning more about the Montessori curriculum and whether Greenspring Montessori School is the right fit for your child, please schedule your virtual or in person visit.
As the pandemic surges through the summer and into the fall, we are beginning to see the ways in which our world is reshaping. From working remotely and learning from home to businesses being transformed forever by the economic turn, we are just beginning to see that our lives will not return to normalcy. Children are entering into a world that will be vastly different from what we grew up with, and they need to be ready.
Montessori education was founded during another tumultuous time – the early 1900s in Europe. Through two world wars, a global pandemic, and a shattering economic crisis, Dr. Maria Montessori saw to it that her model equipped students with the tools to think critically, adapt, and persevere. Over 100 years later, her tenets are still followed today by a growing number of Montessori schools as well as parents adapting the Montessori method at home.
The truth is: the world needs what Montessori children can do.
Anne Frank in her Montessori classroom in 1936.
Montessori children think creatively and innovate
Unlike traditional learning in which the lesson and assessments are the heart of the school experience, exploration is emphasized in Montessori classrooms. Students are encouraged to follow their interests, decide how to demonstrate their learning, and share their discoveries with their peers. By learning at a young age to manage their time and think creatively, Montessori children are able to be thought leaders in the adult world, especially in science, engineering, technology, and mathematics. Montessori truly builds innovators.
Upper Elementary students dissect a cow brain as part of their chosen science work.
Montessori children develop strong leadership skills
Whether learning remotely or on campus, our Guides are dedicated to setting up an environment that allows the child to work at their own pace, encouraging them to ask questions and push themselves to learn more. This shift allows for students to take ownership of their own learning, having a sense of pride around education and discovery. Multi-age classrooms expand upon this, with our older children taking on the role of leaders in the classroom, teaching their peers as they themselves begin to master a subject. From the start of their Montessori education, our youngest children learn that they can do hard things, setting the stage for the work to come in the Elementary and Adolescent classrooms.
Upper Elementary students attending the Montessori Model United Nations Conference in New York to represent the country of Gayana.
A Greenspring student presents his biography research to parents and peers.
Montessori children engage in thoughtful dialogue about our past histories
Children are given the “big picture” – especially through the Cosmic Curriculum at the Elementary level. Academic subjects are not taught separately but woven together to show the interconnectedness of the disciplines. In our Elementary classrooms, children begin to wonder about how the world works, and we are consistently surprised and inspired by the ways in which these young people are ready to change the world for the better. In the Adolescent Community, students are eager to engage in respectful dialogue with their peers, discussing everything from moral philosophy to civil rights and beyond.
An Adolescent student reads a speech she wrote in support of Leia’s Law for gun control on the steps of the Baltimore County Courthouse.
Montessori children have an unwavering commitment to supporting those most vulnerable in our communities
In the Toddler and Children’s House classrooms, much of the child’s work involves the need and desire to serve the community in a way that challenges them. From serving tea and feeding classroom pets to organizing food and clothing drives and sharing art with people in a local retirement community, the children begin to generate their own service initiatives when they see there is a need in the world. Throughout their time at Greenspring, children and adolescents are taught that they have a voice and that they matter in the world. These early lessons help to define who they are and push them to continue making a difference, as we’ve seen with countless Greenspring alumni dedicated to service, the environment, and their communities.
Adolescents plant seedlings with Real Food Farm in Baltimore to support people with limited access to healthy food.
As we look toward the coming year and beyond, we are inspired to think about the direction our children will take us. This is truly a pivot point in history and we as Montessori educators are here to help shape that world with our students. We are not just looking for ways for our children to catch up on academics. We are looking ahead in order to understand what our children need in this new world.
On Monday, January 20th, 95 parents, children, staff, and alumni gathered to participate in a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service. Thank you to all of the families, staff, and alumni who participated. Our community assembled 30 housewarming baskets for people formerly experiencing homelessness who are now moving into new housing, 50 hygiene bags for people experiencing homelessness, and 120 bagged lunches for a local food pantry – all entirely comprised of items donated by our families. Another group of volunteers sorted 2,000 books at The Maryland Book Bank. (Watch closely for a few of our Lower Elementary students featured on Wbal-Tv.) Indeed, many hands make light work!
In considering our theme from last school year (Service & Stewardship) with this year’s (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging) it seemed a natural fit to partner together in this way. Your generosity in providing supplies for the assembly projects was humbling, your partnership with your children in service of others was heartwarming, and our impact together was astounding!
Thank you sincerely for sharing yourself in this way. What a wonderful reminder of how, in Baltimore, we are all in this together. We look forward to being in service alongside you again soon!
A Lower Elementary student writes about the research she is doing.
In the Montessori Children’s House program, students learn letter sounds before the letter names. For example, they learn that the sound of “d” is “duh,” not “dee” and the sound of “b” is “buh,” not “bee.” (See our blog post about Language in the Children’s House for more information.) Spelling is not the focus during the Children’s House years because the focus is on children hearing and learning the letter sounds rather than recognizing the letter names.
A Children’s House student uses the Moveable Alphabet to craft a message.
By using the Moveable Alphabet, children are able to put different letter sounds together to form a word (long before they have the hand strength necessary to hold a pencil). When a young child is asked to form the word “photo” with the Moveable Alphabet, she sounds out how she hears the word, letter by letter.
“Fuh”, “oh”, “tuh”, “oh”.
She would likely place out Moveable Alphabet letters like so:
f-o-t-o
While the word is spelled incorrectly, it is phonetically correct. This “spelling” is age-appropriate for a student in the Children’s House.
Later, once students have a firm grasp of letter sounds and have associated the letter names with these sounds, we work to introduce phonograms, which are when you put two sounds together to make a new sound (think, ee, ea, y, e-e all make the sound “ee”). With this work, which often begins during the Children’s House and continues into Lower Elementary, students become aware that there are options in spelling and become conscious of how to spell words when writing.
Once the child begins to internalize the phonograms, we can begin to explore the complexities of the English language. (Unlike Dr. Montessori’s native language of Italian, English is not a phonetic language; there are so many exceptions to every rule!) We practice reading “sight words” and finding “rule breakers.” This feeds the interest of the Lower Elementary student, who naturally begins to show an interest in how to correctly spell words.
Spelling is reinforced through extensive reading. The more a child reads, the more they will be exposed to spelling patterns. As a result, children are able to edit their work to identify words that don’t “look” right in context and begin to self-correct. In addition, children use a variety of strategies to determine the correct spelling of a work. Things like “have a go,” where the child will write a word that is misspelled, then write it again to see if it is correctly spelled, and if not try again until they get it right. Another strategy children may use to spell longer words is to “chunk” the word into single syllable pieces. As they move to Upper Elementary, children are exposed to Latin roots, which helps them understand the spellings of many English words.
Lower Elementary students write in English and Spanish to their pen pals at a Montessori school in Spain.
Keep in mind that even with more emphasis on spelling in Elementary, guides will not correct students’ spelling while writing rough drafts of reports or stories. We allow the children to focus on developing their skills of self-expression. The expression of the idea and the flow of creativity is more important than the limiting, halting prospect of getting every word right. Corrections are made during the editing stage of the writing process – whether individually, with a peer, or with the assistance of a guide. As children begin to create more polished work to share with others, such as the letters to pen pals shown above, they are more internally motivated to edit and correct their spelling.
A Lower Elementary student reads through his spelling dictionary.
Lower Elementary students keep their own personal spelling dictionaries, in which they can write words they want to remember how to spell. It allows the children to help themselves!It also teaches the very basic and beginning steps of learning how to use a dictionary. But most importantly, the words the student put into their personal dictionaries have meaning to them.
Just as with all other areas of the curriculum, the Montessori approach to spelling is rich, interdisciplinary, and meaningful.
If you are interested in learning more about how to support your toddler’s growing independence at home, take a moment to watch this webinar with Greenspring Montessori School Toddler Guides, Allie Alexander and Michelle Donohue. Allie and Michelle have over twenty years combined teaching experience and they both have Montessori toddlers at home. They offer practical advice that is easy to impliment, as well as suggested products to aid in your child’s independence.
For a full list of products for your child, please take a look below:
Most water bottles found in the children’s section (not the baby section) will work well.
Ikea is also a great place to find inexpensive child-sized open cups, silverware, plates, etc. for when you are eating at the table. We recommend that parents avoid plates and bowls that suction to the table after 18 months.
Footwear
Soft-soled shoes are best for children learning to walk. Once your child’s dexterity begins to improve, we recommend shoes and boots that are also easy to pull on and off.
Many of these items can be purchased used on sites like Facebook Marketplace or at your local consignment shop if you are looking for some less expensive options.
We also recommend searching the For Small Hands website if you are looking for something specific for your child. They have a variety of child-sized materials for every area of the home.
Take a look at our Montessori in the Home series for more tips for toddlers and infants:
