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
Written by Terriann Lane, Children’s House Guide
“A child is an eager observer and is particularly attracted by the actions of the adults and wants to imitate them. In this regard, an adult can have a kind of mission. He can be an inspiration for the child’s actions, a kind of open book, wherein a child can learn how to direct his own movements.” – Dr. Maria Montessori
Recently, I read an article titled, “Grace and Courtesy Beyond Please and Thank You.” The author shared an experience during a hotel stay that left her awestruck. An incident occurred that involved teenagers who chose to trash their hotel rooms, blast loud music, and run wild in the hallways, while unattended by their parents. The housekeeping staff was overwhelmed by the disaster created by the teens’ behaviors. The author wondered why and how the teenagers considered their actions to be appropriate behavior?
As a parent, I can presume that it is important to parents that their children learn to be kind, polite, considerate of others, and mindful of their actions. Consider the actions of the teenagers. What can we do as parents to instill appropriate social behaviors in our children? Society offers innumerable examples of antisocial and pro-social behaviors. Therefore, the onus is on us to model behaviors beyond please and thank you.
Children learn from those within their environments. Therefore, it is important to demonstrate grace and courtesy to children all of the time. Modeling behaviors in preparation for or in response to specific situations helps the children to practice new skills to use later when interacting with others and caring for environments. As adults, we must do what we expect the children to do and never model what we do not want them to do. Demonstrating grace and courtesy should be true, brief, and shown as many times as necessary until the child repeats the skill.
P. Donahue Shortridge wrote, “So if there is anything you want your child to know how to do, or a way you want him or her to behave, you should first model it, then show him or her how to do it, offer lots
of opportunities for practice, and finally, hold the child accountable. First, modeling: In the early years of life, we learn mostly by taking
in the sensorial impressions of the world around us. A series of neural connections helps us imprint that which we see. The child watches what other people do and attempts to do it, too. ” If we want our child to wait his or her turn to speak, stay seated at the dinner table, say thank you in response to being helped, say excuse me when interrupting, help someone who is need of assistance, and know how to conduct him/herself in a restaurant, grocery store, or at a hotel, we must set the example and model the behaviors.
There are many opportunities to provide examples. Modeling should be demonstrated daily, naturally, habitually, slowly, and simply. Parents can demonstrate how to push one’s chair under the table after being excused from the dinner table, return an object to its original location, hang a wet towel to dry after use or place a soiled towel in a clothes hamper, hold a door for someone carrying a load, etc.
Taking the time to model and practice social protocols and good manners, as well as holding children accountable, will empower them to respond appropriately to specific situations and encourage self-discipline.
Parent Challenge: Choose one behavior you would like to model for your child. (For example, placing a hand on a family member’s arm rather than interrupting.) First, invite your child to try something new. Your child will pick up on the excitement in your voice. With as few words as possible and moving slowly and carefully, demonstrate the way you wish your child to wait. Then invite your child to try it! Your child may wish to give a lesson to another family member. She may also enjoy role-playing scenarios of how to do this and how not to do this correctly. Switch roles and have fun!
Reference: Shortbridge, P. Donohue. “Grace and Courtesy Beyond Please and Thank You.” Montessori Life, Spring 2016.
Just some of the presenters at the first annual Baltimore Montessori Conference.
On Saturday, April 1, 2017, Greenspring Montessori School opened it’s campus to the greater Montessori community for our first annual Baltimore Montessori Conference. The conference was created by the Maryland Center for Montessori Studies – the Montessori training center at Greenspring Montessori School. Our mission is inspiring and cultivating strong Montessori advocates and leaders as champions for the human spirit. To learn more about our Early Childhood Teacher Credential, please click here.
To all of our Participants, Presenters, and Volunteers who helped make the inaugural Baltimore Montessori Conference a huge success – THANK YOU!
Keynote speaker Jaqueline Cossentino presenting to an audience of more than 120 at Greenspring Montessori School.
Over 100 Montessori teachers, administrators, and parents from 6 states joined us for a day of workshops focusing around continuing our own education and understanding of Montessori practices. There were many workshops to choose from, with sessions led by inspiring life-long Montessorians including Marie Conti, Kathy Minardi, and Jen Cort!
The Director of Training for the Maryland Center for Montessori Studies, Lee Lanou, poses with two of our presenters.
To those who attended, we hope that you all enjoyed a day to refresh yourself and your Montessori practice, gain valuable theoretical insight, and practical information and ideas. We also hope that you were able to meet and connect with some new Montessori colleagues from other schools.
Be sure to mark your calendars for Saturday, April 7, 2018. We hope to see you there!
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.
Written by Marketa Traband, Children’s House Guide
“In our work, therefore, we have given a name to this part of the mind which is built up by exactitude, we call it the ‘mathematical mind.’”
– Dr. Maria Montessori, The Absorbent Mind
Maria Montessori’s use of the term, ‘The Mathematical Mind,’ refers to the unique tendencies of the human mind, such as order, exactness, exploration, and orientation. Humans also have the unique abilities to imagine, create, and think abstractly. Montessori designed her math materials to incorporate the natural capabilities of a child’s mathematical mind.
All children have mathematical tendencies, and all children should be able to enjoy mathematical studies. Dr. Montessori proposed that the introduction of mathematics during the period of the absorbent mind (0-6 years) enables the child to form positive associations with numbers, which can be carried on throughout life. The key is to provide the child with hands-on experiences. For the young child, an explanation is not enough. Dr. Montessori wrote: “Education is a natural process carried out by the child and is not acquired by listening to words but by experiences in the environment.” Montessori demonstrated that if a child has access to concrete mathematical materials in his early years, she can come to her own understanding of abstraction concerning the concept. On the other hand, these same skills and facts may require long hours of laborious work if introduced later in abstract forms or simply asked to memorize.
To make a mathematical abstraction, the child must have a prepared foundation of experiences of order, sequence, and sensorial experience of things around her. So it is no accident that the basic materials of the Sensorial apparatus are based on the quantity of ten. Likewise, the area of Practical Life nurtures the mathematical mind of the child through its precision and order. Many materials in the Montessori environment have indirect aims that contribute to the development of the mathematical mind.
At a certain point in development, usually around the age of four, the child enters the sensitive period for numbers, and the child’s mathematical nature awakens. She graduates from purely sensorial explorations to interest in specific measuring and counting. Once begun, the child progresses through the math materials sequentially. The first group of exercises is work with numbers 1 to 10. The child learns the quantities from 1 to 10 through a very concrete experience with the number rods. After this, we introduce symbols and the child learns to associate quantity and symbol with the number rods and cards. The sandpaper numbers isolate the symbols for the quantities, and tracing them prepares the hand for writing numerals. With the spindle boxes, we are introducing zero as a concept and the child learns to isolate symbols and quantities – zero through 9.
With Cards and Counters, the child lays out the cards and the counters in a particular way. This work is also an introductory of odd and even numbers. With the Memory game, the child relates what she knows about numbers 0-10 to the environment.
These exercises give the child experience allowing for variety and repetition. The presentation of The Golden Beads gives a visual and a very concrete experience of the decimal system. We begin with units, then tens, hundreds and thousands. It all begins with quantity and then the child is given the symbols. Later the child is putting quantity and symbol together. Following are the four operations; addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
The Teens and Tens work isolates the linear aspects of the decimal system. The child learns the terminology of individual numbers and how to count and recognize numbers from one to 1000 and beyond.
The memory work contains exercises designed to give the child an understanding and the acts necessary to work with the material in abstract terms. The child is given lessons to support her work with addition, subtraction, multiplication and division in totally abstract terms.
One of the last math apparatus used in the primary class are fractions. This is a transitional material from primary to elementary.
During the sensitive period for numbers, the hands-on Montessori materials allow the child to form concrete impressions of the world of mathematics. This in turn, allows her to experience mathematics with positive associations and allow a child to experience the satisfaction of learning through self-discovery. The learning, therefore, is truly the child’s own and cultivates a lifelong love of learning!
Learn more about the Greenspring Montessori School Children’s House Program.
Written by Judy Yormick, Elementary Guide
“No matter what we touch, an atom, or a cell, we cannot explain it without knowledge of the wide universe. What better answer can be given to those seekers for knowledge? It becomes doubtful whether even the universe will suffice. How did it come into being? How will it end? A greater curiosity arises, which can never be satiated; so will last through a lifetime.”
– Dr. Maria Montessori, To Educate The Human Potential
There are three main branches of the Montessori Elementary curriculum. Two of these are the Language curriculum and Math curriculum, which provide the building blocks of communication and calculation. They are necessary for the educational process as the means for exploration, interpretation, and development of understanding. The third branch, the Cultural curriculum, provides the inspiration and keys to understanding the Universe.
The Montessori Elementary Cultural curriculum evolves from a unique perspective compared to other systems of education. In a traditional educational experience, the journey begins with the child as the focus and radiates outward to include the family, neighborhood, country, continent, and on out to the Universe – thus placing the individual at the center of the Universe. The Montessori Cultural scheme, by contrast, responds to the Elementary child’s burgeoning questions and interest in the bigger concepts. “How big is the Universe?” “What is the biggest number?” “How does the world work?” etc. The journey of the Elementary curriculum begins with the creation of the Universe. It is from here that the beginnings of physical sciences, earth sciences, biological sciences, and history emanate. These curricular pieces begin with the big picture and through the elementary years lead chronologically to the individual, culminating during the sixth year. By this point the curriculum looks at the United States and local history, the human anatomy in biology, and more detailed earth and physical sciences.
The curriculum, whenever possible, begins with concrete representations by means of pictures, charts, physical demonstrations, timelines, and other experiential activities. These gradually lead to more abstract representations. The concepts are part of a spiraling curriculum where concepts are initially introduced in an age-appropriate manner and revisited through the elementary years with added complexity and abstraction. There is also an integration of concepts so that the child focusing on a topic such as an ancient civilization, as an example, is also looking at the historical, environmental, geographical, political, scientific, and biological factors involved. Children that experience this view of the Universe discover their place in the bigger picture and the integrated nature of the various disciplines. They also have a different understanding of the gifts that were given by those who came before and the inherent responsibility that they hold for the future.
Learn more about the Greenspring Montessori School Elementary Program.
