How do I incorporate the Montessori method into my kids home school routine?

Question

Where to start with Montessori at home- How, why and where. Hooray soon you shall play!

Montessori is becoming increasingly popular as people recognise the limitations of traditional education. It’s also well-reported that creative successes like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales attended Montessori school. And Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin credit their success to having attended a Montessori school:

They don’t credit their success to drive or brains. They say it was nursery school…We both went to Montessori school and I think that it was part of that training of not following rules and orders and being self-motivated and questioning what’s going on in the world. Doing things a little bit different. (Larry Page)” . So are you wondering what Montessori is then?

Parenting Montessori-style

Here are 10 things you can try at home to apply Montessori principles at home.

1. Slow down — plan less, explore life with your child at a slow pace, and allow time for movement, conversation and gaining cooperation

2. Respect the child — speak and listen to your child as you would an adult

3. Hands on learning — provide concrete experiences for them to make discoveries by themselves, look things up at the library, ask a neighbour or expert, do an experiment etc

4. Follow the child — ask ourselves, “what are they interested in right now and how can I provide opportunities to follow this interest?”

5. Include them in daily life — young children like to be involved in food preparation, setting the table, cleaning, doing laundry, doing the shopping and more

6. See things from the child’s perspective — to understand our child’s behaviour and acknowledge their feelings

7. Use alternatives to bribes, rewards and punishments — move from extrinsic motivators to ways to work with our child and solve problems together; instead of time out, we help them calm down, then make amends

8. Observe objectively rather than making assumptions or judgements — look how they move, the communication they make, the activities they are working to master, their social interactions, and how they eat/sleep

9. Be the guide — we are the adult guiding them (give as much help as needed and as little as possible) rather than being their boss (do as I say) or being their servant (I’ll do everything for you)

10. Prepare ourselves — to look after ourselves to have patience, to fill our own bucket, to understand our own triggers, and find ways to come back to calm when needed

Set up our home

To start using Montessori at home, we can set up our home to make the home more accessible and inviting to our child. Here are some ideas to get you 

Try some Montessori-style activities

It’s fun to try some Montessori-style activities at home. I love how they are hands-on, build concentration, scaffold skills as they master activities, and how they address the needs of the whole child basically encouraging children to be curious learners and explore the world around them. 

Here are some ideas for young children:

1. Music and movement — dancing, singing, banging/shaking instruments, running, skipping, climbing, swinging, biking

2. Language — books, rich language in daily life, baskets of classified objects (with cards)

3. Art and craft — scribbling, painting, cutting, gluing, sewing, clay, stamping

4. Practical life (activities of daily life) — preparing snack, helping prepare meals, cleaning, baking, watering and care of plants, gardening, making the bed, helping with laundry

5. Eye-hand coordination — threading, sorting, posting (putting things through slots and holes)

My favourite places to find out more

 

In person

I highly recommend visiting a Montessori school to observe how it works in practice. You can also visit an open day or parent workshop. And, if there is one nearby, attend a parent-child Montessori class.

Answer 1

The human brain thinks best in stories, not just fact processing. So language arts materials are presented initially within the context of a "Great Story" - a Montessori vehicle for appealing to the imagination of an elementary child. The story creates a context in which to hang his accumulating knowledge, using analogies to complement the logical thinking needed in processing facts. Thus you reach both the heart and mind of a child. Jesus used this method to reach both the hearts and minds of his disciples when he taught in parables.

The young child in the 3-6 year old Montessori curriculum is completely prepared with the basic tools for language development. He has developed a print, possibly cursive handwriting, and has begun to read at least 3-4 letter words. He has typically engaged in the "explosion of writing" by which he attempts to write in a discovery fashion in order to express himself.

So your task as your child moves up to the elementary level (1st-6th grade) is first to assess how far he or she has already discovered the patterns of our language and then to build upon his self-creating work.

The child in the elementary classroom is first given an imaginative and historical overview of our language through the stories called "Communication in Signs" and "The Story of Language." These are followed with a brief historical overview detailing the history of our alphabet and our written language.

Teaching Handwriting the Montessori Way

Handwriting requires much preparation. First the pincer and squeezing exercises in the practical life areas, followed by the perfection of line developed using the metal insets, to the letter formations learned through his muscles by tracing sandpaper letters. The child's hand is further strengthened and his attention to beauty is incorporated in design work using the geometric plane figures and compasses along with various shading and texture techniques. This attention to detail, beauty, and muscle control can later be transferred to cursive writing and beautiful calligraphy. Children in grades 3-6 love to repeat work, so practicing handwriting and letter sounds is a joy at this age, whereas later it becomes drudgery.

In our classrooms we use the Rainbow Writing method developed by the Weseca company (706-546-8833), which allows young children to have access to cursive writing through carefully prepared cursive letters on whiteboard which the children fill in with three colors of markers. In the elementary class, handwriting is incorporated in the Morning Message. A passage from Proverbs is typed on the computer from a D'Nealian font program. Students trace then copy the message and the date for each day.

Teaching Reading the Montessori Way

Montessori children consistently read early, and well and consistently retain their advantages.

Reading instruction begins in the Children's House with the tactile presentation of the sandpaper letters along with their phonetic sounds. This soon develops into an "explosion of writing" as the child suddenly notices print all about him, and given the sounds and formation begins to write words before he can read. In this invented spelling he begins to discover word patterns and becomes sensitized to the world of print. Dr. Montessori discovered the age of 4-1/2 years old to be around the ideal time to present the sounds. The child's sensitivity and interest is heightened. While the argument has often been made that we teach reading too early, in reality we teach the first part of it too late, hurrying the child through the process of memorizing the sounds at a time when it doesn't delight him but bores him, and then forcing him to put them together into words when he hasn't a complete grasp of the sounds, with little or no appreciation for his own impetus and wonder as he makes discoveries and inquiries into language.

The objects are always introduced first. Montessori materials always proceed from the concrete, so concepts can be manipulated outside of the child's head to the abstract where the child is now required to manipulate ideas within his own head. This is not the same as the Dewey-esque ("progressive") doctrine that children must first encounter the real objects, i.e., one doesn't need to bring in an elephant to teach the short sound of "e." Therefore the objects are followed by picture cards which are also manipulated and sorted, and then pictures are associated with more traditional worksheets.