Thursday, January 15, 2009

Welcome to our Montessori journey


Here is a collection of the beginning of our Montessori journey at home. Our son, Christian attended Montessori preschool for 1 year at age 4. We absolutely loved it!! We were so impressed with the level of concentration and interest the children had in their work. The children were allowed to do and enjoyed immensely, adult like tasks. The children executed these adult like tasks with such precision. The children in this room were independent, motivated learners. They had the freedom to chose work they were interested in. If this interest lasted for days, then they were allowed to continue and delve into greater depths of knowledge in this area. We loved Montessori soooooooo much it began a passionate study of Maria Montessori, other childhood educators and why our childhood education was so different. I'll get into more about these things a little later. Right now, I am eager to get my blog started and to post these precious pictures of Christian and Joshua immersed in "their work".

What I have learned . . . . If you quite yourself and observe your children, they will show you what excites and interests them and then it's "our work" to "prepare the environment" with activities to foster and encourage there individual interest. Where there is great interest, there is great learning. Learning then becomes fun and not a tedious chore!
I absolutely love my days with my boys.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello, Christian! Hello, Joshua! Hello, Teresa! How exciting that you are blogging. Max and I were talking about you in the car yesterday as we were driving home from his school. He is curious to know if your grown up tooth is coming in well, Christian? He and the other children in his preschool class were learning about how to take care of their teeth, and he remembered that you have a new tooth growing.
Teresa, I presented some Montessori information as part of a training I did for a group of child care teachers out in Niagara Falls, and received rave reviews. I think many of them will begin incorporating some of the concepts into their classrooms. And my interest was sparked by you, so thank you very much!
Hope you are enjoying these snowy winter days, and learning lots. Oh, Danielle took her lapbook about snowflakes into her kindergarten classroom on her share day - she is so proud of it!

Take good care,
Lisa

Anonymous said...

Christian & Joshua:

Love your blog. Hope to see more smiling faces and good news.