For a podcast of this post, scroll to the bottom of this page or subscribe on iTunes. We wish we could protect children from every pain. We want to bundle them up and prevent them from encountering pain, grief, bullying, skinned knees, or discomfort of any sort. The reality is, we can’t. Bad things will […]
Sometimes we just need a bit of a nudge. A little assistance. A reminder of how something works. In the Montessori classroom, help is always nearby. It’s one of the best gifts of a mixed-age setting. With mixed ages comes mixed abilities. I might be the expert at the bow tying frame, but I haven’t […]
We received the most amazing, thought-provoking question on Facebook. Here it is: What a huge, important thought! This question was a response to a post from Maria Montessori’s Absorbent Mind, which we’re reading together as a team. “…this philosophy teaches us never to give more help than is absolutely necessary.” We’ve also written about help […]
Maria Montessori writes, “Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.” Oh yes, of course! This is easy! But note, this is different from, “Never help a child with a task where he is already successful.” There are so many times we “help,” and then, we fall into another […]
There’s this thing that happens in Montessori classrooms. We don’t send home a daily report, we could never summarize “all” a child is learning during the day, for although we are giving one, or two, or three presentations to a child, and he is working with a material for a minute, or an hour, or […]