Hello, Julia Child!

This spring break I did not attend the annual AMS conference (I do intend to listen to some of the workshops via the folks at EGAMI A/V). I did visit an intriguing Montessori site, though, while in Pasadena, CA.

The Aria Montessori School on Euclid Avenue dates back to 1913 and surely must have been the school attended by Julia Child. It was also visited by Maria Montessori herself in 1917 a few years after her famous demonstration class at the pan-pacific expo in California.

 

Bulding the Pink Tower

"Building the Pink Tower" is a documentary film project that reimagines schools and learning through the lens of Montessori education.

 

In a climate of concern and criticism about American schools, Building the Pink Tower shines a light on what we want in education: eager learning, creative thinking, and collaborative work. The film will examine how Montessori schools nurture the imagination of children and lay a solid foundation for their success in life. And it will offer strategies for incorporating elements of Montessori philosophy into any classroom environment.

The filmakers spent a morning at Cornerstone Montessori School in Saint Paul, MN, to gather footage for the fundraising trailer. They were moved by what they saw.

 

We want to share this video which shows the magic of Montessori education. www.buildingthepinktower.org

Like us on Facebook www.facebook.com/buildingthepinktower.

Kids in the Kitchen

Winter is a great time to initiate, or expand on, children's roles in the family kitchen. Our weekly cooking classes at MCH follow the Montessori principles of empowering young children to be independent and feature hands on developmentally appropriate and fun projects for young children. Each year we compile a cookbook of our child friendly recipes for families to try at home and have their children take the lead in the kitchen. There are several good cookbooks on the market geared toward preschoolers, such as Molly Kasten's Pretend Soup and her newest, Salad People. Habits for healthy eating and participation in family life can never start too early. It's a great way to empower your child to develop fine motor skills, concentration, a sense of order, independence and more. The end results are sweet rewards--you'll be surprised what even picky eaters will try if they have helped to make it themselves.

First Lady Michelle Obama's blog, Let's Move, had the following post today:

At just 12 years old, Haile Thomas has made a big difference. A youth leader working hard to inspire kids to eat healthy, Haile joined First Lady Michelle Obama, along with a handful of other guests, for the President’s State of the Union Address on Tuesday evening.  
read more

Happy Lunar New Year!

Preparing for the new year.

tea table

jiaoze 

good luck signs for the doors

Last year's lion dance to bring in the year of the dragon--

Hoping for good luck for all in the year of the snake!

Games for Children

The following post from Montessorian, Maren Schmidt gives great examples of activities to do with young children to develop awareness and self-control.

Learning to Stop and Think             Impulsivity is a sign of Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) and probably most 36-month-olds' behavior would meet the criteria for being ADHD.   Some of the criteria follow: makes careless mistakes, has difficulty sustaining attention in work or play activities, does not seem to listen, does not follow through on instructions, has difficulty organizing tasks, avoids tasks that require sustained effort, is easily distracted, is forgetful about daily activities.   What happens during years three, four and five of a child's development determines whether that child learns to self-regulate behavior. Mastering certain key skills during this first six years of life makes a huge difference in a person's life.     Learning to stop and think is one of those key skills. When I was a six-year-old my teenage neighbor taught me a singing cheer: Stop, look and listen. I've sung this cheer many a time with my preschool and elementary students to get the point clear and in the air when ADD behavior was everywhere.     It really does boil down to those three words. We need to help our children learn to stop, look and listen.   Stop. One of the simple games I recommend for helping direct and redirect a young child's behavior is the Verb Game. Helping your child integrate thought and movement, i.e. having the body obey the will, is a great help to the young child.       Directions for the Verb Game: On 3'' x 5'' index cards, with one word per card, write the following words: jump, walk, sit, stand, twirl, spin, squirm, wiggle, laugh, smile, nod, shake, blink, smack, stomp, tap, clap, click, rub, pat, crawl, freeze and stop.   I suggest writing these words down because in a moment of great need, I can never think of enough action words. But I can usually find the stack of cards.   Play the game by telling your child that you are going to play the Verb Game, that you'll say a word and both you and your child will do it together. Read ''jump'' out loud, and begin to jump. Jump for about ten seconds with your child, and then give the next command. After the fourth or so command, say, ''Don't jump.'' Wait about ten seconds, and see what happens.   What you more than likely will see is your child jump or do whatever you've instructed him or her to not do. Continue on with rest of the commands, and then offer your child a chance to give the commands. Play on a daily basis to help your child learn to follow directions by connecting mind and body, thoughts and actions.   Look.Helping your children to notice the world around them can be done with a game I call "What Do You See?" Take a detailed filled object-perhaps a photo from a magazine or an art postcard. Invite your child to play the "What Do You See?" game. Sit in a comfortable place and place the object in sight and say, "We are going to sit silently for 30 seconds and look at this picture. When 30 seconds is up I am going to ask you want you see."       On small slips of paper write what your child tells you he or she sees in the picture. Try to elicit ten items, placing the labels around the picture. Review and re-read each label. "You looked at this picture and you saw a girl, a bike, a bike helmet, a pink dress, a black dog, a boy, roller skates, a fence, red flowers, green grass, a big tree."   Point at each label as you name the items. Gather the labels, read them one at a time, hand the label to your child and let them place on the picture. Afterwards place the picture and the labels in a basket and place on an activity shelf for your child to repeat by either looking or, looking and labeling. Needless to say, this looking exercise is also an early reading activity.     Listen. Children love quiet. All they need is to learn how to listen. Children enjoy a listening game where everyone gets quiet for about two minutes, which is a very long time for three- and four-year-olds, and for some 34-year-olds, too.       In my preschool class I'd set an hourglass-type egg timer in the middle of our group to give the children a focal point and concept of how much longer they should sit and listen. In the quiet the children heard each other sigh, squirm and change positions. In short the children became aware of how a simple movement disrupts the mood of the group. At the end of the two-minute period, I would go around the group and ask each child what they heard as they listened.   Without exception, the children were amazed at what they could hear. Birds outside even though all the doors and windows were shut. Cars at the stop sign a block away. A fire truck leaving the station a mile away. The rumble of a train. The neighbor's tractor or leaf blower. The refrigerator. The heat clicking on. The air going through their noses. The clock ticking in the adjoining room. The faucet dripping in the bathroom. In the quiet the children listened. After this five- to ten-minute listening exercise the children appeared more confident and controlled in their actions, left the group lesson with tranquil smiles and worked the rest of the morning with deeper concentration than before the lesson.      Stop, look and listen. Cheer your children on to learn how to stop and think, essential skills for a lifetime.

Google Doodle Celebrates Educator Maria Montessori

Google on Friday honored Italian physician and educator Maria Montessori with a homepage doodle celebrating her 142nd birth anniversary.


The drawing (below, right) features some of the tools that form the basis of Montessori's educational methods, which emphasize hands-on, individualized learning within mixed age groups in a child-friendly setting.

Montessori was born in 1870 in Chiaravalle, Italy and early on rejected the traditional gender roles of her time, choosing to attend technical school, which few girls did, according to her NNDB biography. Upon graduation, she continued her education at the Regio Istituto Tecnico Leonardo da Vinci, where she excelled and developed a passion for the biological sciences.

In 1890, she applied to University of Rome but was denied entrance to the medical program because of her gender. Instead, she enrolled to study physics, mathematics, and the natural sciences and was eventually allowed to study medicine. In 1896, she presented her thesis to an all-male board and they were so impressed that they awarded her a full medical degree, making her the first female doctor in Italy.

After working in insane asylums with mentally handicapped children, in 1904 she began re-engineering the field of children's education. She believed that all children have an inner drive to learn, and that children learn best when in a safe, hands-on learning environment.

Montessori also found that children help teach each other when put into groups with other kids of their own age range. She believed that teachers should pay close attention to students, not the other way around.

Her early efforts were so successful that she amassed a large following of parents and teachers who wanted to learn her methods. She later gained support from Thomas Edison, Helen Keller, and Alexander Graham Bell, who founded the Montessori Educational Association, headquartered in Washington D.C.

Montessori died in 1952 in The Netherlands. Her methods are still in use today in public and private schools all over the world.

Google's co-founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, both went through the Montessori education system and have credited it for their success.

"I think it was part of that training of not following rules and orders and being self-motivated, questioning what's going on in the world, doing things a bit different," Page said in an interview with ABC (below).

For more from Angela, follow her on Twitter @amoscaritolo.

Potus Crashes Kids' State Dinner

Kid's State Dinner

Watch Live: Monday August 20, 2012 at 10AM EST
On Monday August 20, 2012 First Lady Michelle Obama will be hosting the first ever Kids’ “State Dinner” at the White House welcoming 54 budding chefs to a formal luncheon in the East Room! The guests, who are aged 8-12, represent all U.S. states, three territories and the District of Columbia, and each of them (and their parents) submitted a healthy recipe as part of the Healthy Lunchtime Challenge.

Nature Play as an Everyday Joy of Childhood?

Frequency Requires Proximity

• Posted by Ken Finch on June 25, 2012 at 12:02pm in C&NN Natural Families Network
• 
  
• Most of us who enjoyed nature play in our childhoods realize that it didn’t matter if we had a pristine patch of forest to play in or just a couple of vacant city lots.  Either way, there were endless things to find, explore, capture, imagine, and play with.  But what was important is that these places were right there, within our walking/running/biking distance.  No car, no parent, and no schedule were needed to get outside and play in nature.

The children and nature movement is fostering wonderful new ways for kids to play outdoors, such as designed natural playspaces, family nature clubs, and naturalized schoolyards.  These and other similar efforts are valuable steps – not only for the kids, but for parents who are reconsidering their children’s indoor, nature-deprived lives.  Yet most of these new approaches are challenged in one vital dimension: frequency. 

               

When Dr. Louise Chawla (University of Colorado) researched influential childhood experiences in nature, she found that, “The special places that stood out in memory, where people formed a first bond with the natural world, were always a part of the regular rhythm of life.”  Those powerful experiences didn’t typically come from annual family camping trips, but rather from day-after-day, week-after-week events in children’s lives.  Actually, no special research is needed to realize that frequent childhood activities have more lasting impact than ephemeral ones.  Practicing the violin once a month is not a very effective strategy!  Is it better than nothing?  Perhaps – but only if you set your sights very low.

The same equation applies to nature play.  If we want it to have maximum impact, then it needs to be “part of the regular rhythm of life.”  It seems unlikely that we can achieve this solely through monthly meet-ups or widely scattered playspaces – strategies that require parents, cars and calendars, and thus compete for time within families’ hectic schedules.  Are these approaches valuable?  Absolutely!  Are they sufficient?  Unlikely.

If we really want to power-up nature-based play, it needs to be available where children can enjoy it almost any day, without adult involvement or confining schedules.  For most kids this means either home yards or neighborhood parks – and (sadly) only the former is likely to alleviate the fears of 21^st-century American parents.  Can a typical quarter-acre suburban yard actually support nature play?  Or a city lot half that size?  Or an apartment courtyard?  The answer is yes, especially for kids of about two to eight years old.  Younger children’s worlds are much smaller than those of adults.  They don’t need sprawling spaces or eye-popping vistas.  Their attention naturally focuses on tiny and manipulable pleasures:  on dandelions rather than rose gardens; on earthworms rather than herds of bison; on a patch of dirt to dig in rather than a yawning cave to explore.

Unfortunately, the typical American yard is no haven for nature play.  Good nature play requires “rich” settings – that is, a diversity of plants, animals, and landforms that create endless opportunities for discovery and engagement.  Turf grass lawns, solitary shade trees, and a few neatly trimmed shrubs do not meet these criteria.  However, even the sparest yard can be augmented for good nature play with a little thought, a dose of elbow grease, and much less money than what those elaborate backyard play sets cost.

The key is to create yards with a “density of diversity:” a collection of micro-habitats that will harbor lots of natural discoveries and delights throughout the seasons.  These micro-habitats might include a shrub thicket, a wildflower garden, a jumbled pile of boulders, a tiny garden pond, a butterfly garden, a berry patch, a mass of tall native grasses, or even a space allowed to just grow into whatever comes up!  Once you’ve established a few of these tiny worlds in your yard, you can enhance them with a digging pit or a giant dirt pile, a couple of large logs, bird and toad houses, a bench or hammock in a quiet nook, and plenty of “loose parts” to nurture creative and constructive play.  These loose parts can be branches, driftwood, cattails, bamboo poles, boards, tree cookies (log slices), tarps, seed pods, pine cones, large boxes, hay bales, and whatever else you can readily scrounge up.

By focusing your primary efforts on creating multiple micro-habitats, you will ensure authentic nature play:  interactions with real nature, in all of its beauty, wonder, unpredictability, and adventure.  Manufactured outdoor play components – like the plastic play equipment designed to look natural – do not create the same connections to the natural world.  Kids can’t peel the bark off a plastic log to find rollie-pollies, and they won’t find monarch caterpillars feeding on fiberglass leaves.  In fact, one big, over-grown wildflower bed -- or a patch of flowering shrubs laced with tiny paths -- will bring more lasting and real nature play to your kids than will any human-made product! 

Note, though, that nature playscapes are more “messy” than most home landscaping, so you may want to keep much of your nature play zone in the backyard where it won’t generate hostility from neighbors who think front yards should look like golf greens.  However, certain nature play features are usually “dressy” enough to bring into front yards, like butterfly gardens, boulders, and herb gardens.  And by highlighting street-side nature play, you may encourage other local parents to think more about “kid-scaping” their own yards.  Nature play zones get better and better when more of your neighbors imitate and add to your own efforts!

None of these steps towards home-based nature play require great knowledge, training, or expense.  They can be implemented bit by bit, and your plans can be in constant flux as you discover what your kids and their friends most enjoy.  The ultimate goal is to create enough nature play “critical mass” so that your kids are excited to play in their own yards -- day after day, and whenever they wish.  Then nature play will be a regular joy for your children; then it will achieve the frequency needed to influence and benefit them for decades to come!

________________________________

A few suggested resources with ideas to support home-based nature play:

- “A Parents’ Guide to Nature Play” from Green Hearts Institute for Nature in Childhood:http://www.greenheartsinc.org/Parents__Guide.html

- National Wildlife Federation’s guidance on creating backyard wildlife habitats:

www.nwf.org/Get-Outside/Outdoor-Activities/Garden-for-Wildlife/Crea...

“Nature Play:  Simple and Fun Ideas for All” from Forestry Commission England:

http://www.forestry.gov.uk/forestry/INFD-7LSEHW

A Child’s Garden:  Enchanting Outdoor Spaces for Children and Parents, by Molly Dannenmaier

Plants for Play:  A Plant Selection Guide for Children’s Outdoor Environments, by Robin Moore

Natural Playscapes:  Creating Outdoor Play Environments for the Soul, by Rusty Keeler

Searching for Montessori

Animals and Children

ANIMALS The attitude of respect for nature, plants and animals begins in the home and in the first years of life —spending as much time as is possible outside, in all seasons, experiencing animals in the natural world—listening to birds, collecting shells on the beach, reading about animals, learning to recognize and to name insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals.
Nature Table or Nature Shelf
Add to the nature area, or the special table or shelf you use for plant specimens, the child's collection of shells, found birds nests or old nests of insects, found bones and perhaps famous artwork depicting animals.
Caring for Animals
Children have a wonderful affinity for animals at an early age. Just as they are learning to be kind to each other, and to respect the environment in general, this is the time to show them exact ways to be kind to animals. One of the lessons I learned to give in my first training course in London was to pick up and hold a cat, beginning with giving attention to being quiet and moving slowly and carefully as one even approaches the cat. Then to speak with a gentle voice. And finally I learned to show the child exactly where to put his hands as he picks up the cat and gently cradles it to his chest. Children are delighted to learn the tiny details of caring for animals, and we should not expect them to automatically know how to treat animals without having had careful, hands-on lessons.

Observing Animals
Animals are best observed free in nature to show children how they really life, who they really are. If we hang a bird feeder  just outside the window and show the child how to sit quietly so that the birds won't be afraid, we provide a way to watch birds being natural, rather than in a cage. Binoculars give the child a feeling of participating in the birds' activities, and allow the child to watch birds from a distance. It is surprising to see how a child can focus and become still when the interest in watching an ant or a bird has been awakened. When an animal is going to visit the classroom, we must prepare, with the child, for all of the animal's needs ahead of time—comfort, exercise, food, warmth, gentle handling—and have the visit last only as long as the guest is comfortable. The consideration for the animal being more important than the satisfaction of our curiosity. In our home we kept two containers always clean and ready to receive a guest salamander or small garden snake. It takes no time at all to dig up a dandelion or another small plant, and to put it in the terrarium with a sprinkle of water for the animal to hide under for its short visit. A terrarium can be as elaborate as a ten-gallon aquarium with a wire top, or a simple jar.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that, even though it may be a short visit, the animal will need air. So if a container such as a large jar is used, be sure to show the child that there must be holes in the metal top, or show how to fasten cheesecloth with a rubber band to make a breathable top. There should also be moisture but it is easy to put too much water in a container than is comfortable for the creature. The visiting animal should not be in the class more than for the time it can be truly comfortable. Help the child understand that it is there just as a visitor, for us to look at and appreciate, to learn about how it moves, what kinds of parts of the body it has, how it eats, and so forth. Then we thank it for the opportunity and let it go. These lessons should be thought out ahead of time and presented slowly and carefully to the child. This shows that the adult respects the work and expects the child to be careful and to do his best.

Hatching cocoons in the home or the classroom is a truly magical experience for the child, and there are mail-order larvae available so that this can be done safely at the correct time. Observing the life cycle of one animal is a good way to introduce the amazing phenomenon of life cycles in different animals, and to present books and pictures that show the life cycles of other creatures, such as tadpole to frog, and the difference between placental and other mammals.

Language of Zoology
At first the language cards of zoology should be shown when the animal is present. For example after observing a snake, show the child a set of cards of reptiles, which will include several snakes.
When observing a fish, show the child the cards of the external parts of a fish. Then the external parts of amphibians, birds, and mammals. Point out the similarities and the differences between the body parts of these animals that those of the human, or the child. Which animals have eyes and a mouth? Which have legs? Then the child will discover the connection between front legs and arms, and the variety of placement of ears, and all kinds of other things.

When working on the maps of the continents, show the child the animals that come from different parts of the world, from which continents. When looking at a globe that shows mountains and rivers, etc., show her which animals live in different biomes. Books should be chosen carefully, the pictures real, and the text not just watered down adult text, but with facts of interest to the child. Give a child simple picture books, beginning reading books, but also advanced reference books. Look for pictures of entire animals, with a white background, so the child can see exactly what we mean when we point to a picture and call it "tiger" (and not "tiger and rock and bushes," or the "head of a tiger.")

Dissections
Just as dissection of flowers is not appropriate at this age, the dissection of animals, and studying internal parts, can be fearsome to the young child. This is put off for the curiosity and understanding of the older child, and even then only on found animals.

Art
Art is connected to zoology as it is to all areas of life. Drawing or painting, or working with clay, from nature, or from books, or from imagination, animals are an inspiration. Having beautiful art containing animals is an inspiration for the child to create her own.












This link is provided by Michael Olaf Montessori www.michaelolaf.net