Piano Lessons

We bought our piano in November of 2009. We bought it because Sam seemed so interested in playing. We were given some great lesson books and other materials. In January of 2010 I sat down with Sam one time with the first lesson book and it's been gathering dust ever since. It's not that she wasn't ready for piano; it's that she wasn't ready to take direction from me.

For two years, Sam has occasionally plucked at the piano by herself (doing it "my own way" in defiance of any instruction that I might offer), never learning much, but recently showing signs of being able to hunt down notes by ear. I've also fiddled around with the piano, and we've enjoyed the recorded music on it quite often. Guests have played for us. But still, it was mostly just an expensive decoration.

A couple of weeks ago, Sam told me that she wanted to learn to play Twinkle Twinkle. I think she has been playing music on the bells at school, and I had helped her pick out the notes on the piano a few times. (As long as I showed her the notes in the way that she told me to, she would cooperate.) I got the sense that she might be ready this time, so I asked her if she would like me to give her piano lessons, and she said yes!

We've had four or five lessons now. Sam will sit still and observe as I give her a demonstration, and she will attempt to perform the tasks as demonstrated. We've gone over the proper sitting position. We've learned the correct way to hold her hands and how her fingers should strike the keys. We've numbered her fingers and played "wiggle number four!" type games. We've played notes with specific fingers up and down the scale. We've tapped out quarter notes and half notes. Each lesson is short - maybe 15 minutes - and we always go back a couple of lessons in the book as a review. At the end of every lesson, we have "free time" where she gets to learn a song in her old, comfortable way - I point to the keys she should play and she hits them with her index finger.

I didn't have any plan at all when we started, except that I would use this particular book. The short lessons, the reviews, and the "free time" all came about naturally, and I realize that I've internalized a lot of the pedagogical principles that I've been studying for the past few years as I've been preparing for homeschooling. That is gratifying. A little bit more deliberate was my use of Montessori language; I told Sam that first I would give a "presentation" and then it would be her turn, just like at school. I've tried this in the past with her to no avail. But now it is working and we're having fun! I am teaching Sam something in a formal way and we are having a good time!

I don't know if this is a normal parenting experience or not, but this is a huge breakthrough for Sam and me. Since she was about two-and-a-half, Sam has generally shown no respect for any teaching I might offer. The quotation marks around "my own way" in the second paragraph were not scare quotes. I was quoting her literal response to just about every challenging thing I've attempted to show her or teach her for the past couple of years. The fact that I would show her a method automatically made it wrong to her, and she would insist on doing it "my own way." Writing letters of the alphabet, zipping up her coat, putting on her gloves, tracing sandpaper letters, putting her glass of milk on the far side of the plate, opening the car door, reciting a poem, putting together a jigsaw puzzle - anything. If I tried to teach it, she rebelled and insisted on doing it "her way." Most often, her way didn't work, but that didn't seem to matter to her. At first this was very upsetting to me and I kept pushing, but eventually I backed off simply out of frustration. If she didn't want to learn from me, I couldn't force her. So I kept offering, but as soon as she resisted, I stopped trying and allowed her to wallow in her incompetence. And in many areas, she really is quite incompetent for her age.

The change is not just with the piano. She is showing me the same respect in other areas now as well. A few days ago, she allowed me to teach her how to put a towel on a towel bar. Seriously, she is five years old and she had never learned this simple task. They use hooks at school and we have hooks for her coats, but every time she used a towel in the bathroom, it ended up on the floor. I'd watched her try to do it on her own and she just could not figure out how to even up the sides and use gravity, but there was no way she would allow me to show her. This time, she observed and then proudly did it on her own. And she keeps doing it - at least when she remembers that she knows how.

Sam has had the same rebellious attitude towards her dad, but quite so strong. At school she has always taken direction - no problem. And I've seen her accept instruction from adult friends of ours and from her peers. So I've always known this was part of her natural and necessary separation process from her parents. I just didn't know if it would ever change, and that has been a huge worry for me as a future homeschooler. No matter how Montessori-ish you make a homeschool environment, the student still needs to respect the teacher.

And Sam's personality has not changed. I'm still going to need to be the most unobtrusive type of teacher for her. Any whiff of an attempt to control her will cause her to rebel. Finding ways to activate her internal motivation will be my biggest challenge, I know. But the fact that she now recognizes that I know things and that I can help her without controlling her is huge. My task now is not to screw it up. I need to continue to give her examples of ways in which I can help her learn faster than she would do on her own, but I need to abstain from pushing. If I can do that, I think we might actually have a chance at success with homeschooling.

Photos Coming Soon!

I've almost got our photos organized and will have tons of pictures of the twins to share soon. But I just ran across this photo of Sam at her Montessori school from last spring and had to share it immediately. Look how grown up she is!

Samantha's Report Card

School is out for the summer! And, contrary to the famous commercial, I think now is the most wonderful time of the year. I thought summer last year would be tough - no more free babysitting in the form of school.  (Well, not free, but included in the price of admission.) But I found out that, with a couple of camps and a couple of trips to break things up, spending full days with my daughter was a pleasure that I had missed during the school year. I hope and expect that this summer will be the same.

Sammy received her end of year "report card," such as it is from a Montessori program. Actually, they call it a "progress report." There are a couple dozen categories in which the child is rated from 1-5 ("works with moveable alphabet," "enjoys listening to music," "demonstrates grace and courtesy," etc.), but it's really the teacher's narrative that is meaningful. Last year, the theme of the report was that Sammy needed to be more independent. I was so concerned! This is why we were sending her to Montessori! She was independent at home. Why wasn't she choosing work on her own and being so timid at school? Why were we paying all this money for her to sit around and peel carrots?

Well, I was wrong and I was right. Developing her independences is the primary reason we sent her to Montessori, but the fact that she wasn't showing independence wasn't the fault of her school or her character - it was no cause for alarm. It was just what she had to go through to get where she needed to be, and thank god she is in Montessori, because this year, she got there! And she did it on her own, the Montessori way, because she was ready, not because someone pushed her.

This year, Sammy flourished. She blossomed. She went from reticent, shy, clingy school-Sammy, to choosing her own friends, choosing her own work, working hard every day, acting with confidence, and really concentrating on her work. I couldn't be more pleased. Of course, she has made excellent progress in the "academic" side of school as well. She is reading real books now - her language development is far ahead of the curve. She is also on-track with numbers and math, which she was completely uninterested in last year. She works with all the other materials in the classroom as well, from geography puzzles to the musical bells. But to me, those things are consequences. The important thing is that Sam is learning about the rewards of work and effort, about independence, and about values.

This year, her teacher mentions that Sammy still sometimes needs direction in choosing more challenging activities, and her underdeveloped fine-motor skills are still holding her back. (Isn't it wonderful that in Montessori, a need for direction in choosing more challenging activities is not seen as normal, but something to be improved upon? The child is expected to learn to choose challenging activities for his own, selfish purposes.) I must have blossomed right along with Sam because now, I'm not worried. Instead of flipping out about how Sam must be lazy or fears failure, I just see this as part of the road that she needs to travel. Some kids struggle in other ways. Sammy struggles with self-confidence. There is no better place for her to learn it firsthand than in a Montessori classroom. I can't wait to see how she develops next year! And maybe I'll learn something again, too.

A Little Thing

Sam's very favorite thing to do at school is phonograms, and it shows.  Today, she read the word "enjoy."

This Week at Mossoff Montessori

Sam didn't do too much "school" work in the past week, but it's a wonderful option to have when we are not busy with other fun activities.  I think it is still working out well that she just chooses her Montessori work when she wants to.  She might go from playing with her dolls to working seriously on polishing, to torturing the cat.

In the past week, Sam did more polishing and cutting, and did the metal insets one time.  (I'm shocked that she isn't working with those more often.)  We added a few new activities.  Since she can't use the hole punch yet, I punched a row of holes in a small piece of paper and showed her how to hold it on top of another piece of paper and fill in the holes with a felt-tip marker to make rows of holes.  She liked that, but only for about 5 minutes.

I also made my own version of the spindle box.  I wanted to do the number rods first, but I hadn't figured out how to make them.  Luckily, Sam seems to be doing well with the spindle box, which in my case, is an egg carton and macaroni:



You just dump out all the macaroni and then put the right number of pieces back in each cup.  The first time Sam tried it she was all over the map, but today she got them all right except for 8 and 9.  It's fun to watch her progress.

We also did some non-Montessori games that were fun and educational.  I had brought home some dice for her from Las Vegas, so we played "highest wins."  We each rolled one die and then figured out who had the higher number.  Sam liked that a lot except that we had some bad luck and I won much too often for her taste.  (She is just beginning to want to win games.)

Then we played with a game called First Words Puzzle Set which is just a huge set of cardboard cards, each with a picture and a word, and each of which is split into two puzzles pieces.  If we only use about 5 cards, Sam can put the puzzle pieces together and she can read some of the words.  She likes to do that kind of game with me but occasionally she will play it by herself.  This video is from a few weeks ago, but it shows her playing Zingo by herself, and how pleased she is when she "wins:"

Mossoff Montessori

I can now say that I am officially a homeschooler!  Well, sort of.  Sam will still go to Montessori preschool, but we got started with "summer school at home" this week and we're having a blast!

I had intended to start out in a formal, Montessori way: a dedicated time for school, starting with circle time; a separate space for the Montessori materials, away from toys and other distractions; and me 100% prepared to give proper demonstrations for everything.

Not!

I didn't have time to do any work on this project at OCON as I had intended.  We got home and I was totally swamped but I knew that if I didn't get started right away, the whole summer might pass us by.  I wanted to jump right in, but I only had a few things set up, and some were only half-ready, and I didn't know the proper way to do anything much at all.  I guess "prepared environment" really means a lot of prep work, huh?    

I did have a few things ready, so I decided to just allow Sam to work on them during the normal course of the day.  This destroys any ambition of having her concentrate for long periods of time or being totally free to choose any work that she is interested in.  I'd like to move towards that goal, but for now, at least she spends some time doing structured activities independently. 

Here is what our little homeschool looks like:



I don't have enough open shelving, so the drawers have to suffice.  Some of them contain Montessori work and some contain other toys.  Not ideal.  The colored bins on the right hold regular toys and you can see a doll-house on the floor right next to the table. 

I had to put the metal insets in a different room because they took up so much space:



We have two mostly unused bedrooms in this house, either of which could serve as a dedicated school room and solve these problems, but they are being used for storage now, so it would be an enormous effort to clean them out.  Also, they are not on the main level of the house where my computer is, and where the kitchen is.  I have a feeling that Sam would not take well to working in an isolated room like that, and I would have nothing to do.  I do plan to use one of those bedrooms for homeschooling when it's a full-time thing, at which time I'll move my office into the same room.

For our work, we started with polishing pennies, the metal insets, and cutting along a line.  For the pennies, I set up all the needed items on a tray:



I demonstrated how to place one penny on a napkin (which she has to get from her kitchen cabinet), to take a Q-Tip, dip it in the lemon juice and roll it on the side of the glass to avoid drips, and to rub the penny.  We had a few shiny, clean pennies, so I showed her what the penny should look like.  When she is satisfied (and I leave this up to her), she puts the shiny pennies in the other cup.  (For all of you die-hards out there, yes I do put the dirty pennies on the left and the clean ones on the right - always left-to-right!  This was how the tray looked after she finished.)  As soon as I can remember to buy actual lemons at the store, we'll add squeezing the lemons as part of the process.  For now, I refill the little cup with bottled lemon juice every night.

I set up the metal insets for her and reviewed for myself how they are to be used.  So I'm prepared to demonstrate, but she hasn't used them yet.  As part of the set-up, I had to cut a lot of paper into squares the same size as the metal insets, and I ended up with a lot of small pieces of paper.  I decided to use it for "cutting along the line."  This is exactly what it sounds like: the child uses scissors to cut along a line drawn on paper.  I created a series of paper with lines and Sam spent about an hour working on this on Friday, so I suspect I'm going to have to make a new set of paper with lines every night for a while.  Here is a video of what I made for this exercise:



After I took the video I decided to eliminate the papers with more than one line.  I didn't do that in the first go-around and now I'm thinking it was a bad idea.  Another part of this exercise that Sammy really likes is that when she cuts the squiggles, she ends up with two pieces of paper that look a bit like jigsaw puzzle pieces.  She enjoys putting them back together again.  The paper and a pair of scissors are on a tray just like the one for the pennies, and she can bring it to her table to work on any time she chooses.

I also tried to teach her how to use a hole-punch to make rows of holes, but she didn't have the hand strength to use it.  I have another, similar exercise dealing with rows that I'll set up this week, though.  I'm really glad that I wrote up my earlier blog post detailing all of the activities I wanted to do - I've been referring to it often.

So far, this is going really well!  It's low-pressure and we both are having fun.  If it continues to work well, I might not ever make it more formal.  Thank god she has her real Montessori school nine months out of the year.  I think it would be really, really hard, if not impossible (without other children) to create the same kind of environment at home.  But I must say, this is an auspicious beginning for both of us!

Montessori Summer School at Home

A few days ago I was lying in bed, stressing out about how I'm ever going to manage homeschooling.  It's still quite a few years off and I'm doing all I can to prepare, but I still sometimes get overwhelmed with the whole idea. 

The thing that I was mulling over this time was how I'm going to manage the transition from school to home learning.  Sam is going to be in Montessori for at least three years, and I'm considering keeping her there for first and second grade, too.  Especially if she stays in school through second grade, I worry about that transition.  Knowing what I know about her personality, I don't think she will simply accept the idea of school at home, especially with mom as the teacher.  I started thinking about ways that I could ease that transition.

And suddenly it hit me - I can homeschool her each summer!  I don't know why this didn't occur to me before, but it really addresses four issues: it will help get Sam used to school at home, it will give me practice at this teaching thing without much pressure, it will keep the continuity of her education going year-round, and it will fill up some of that scary empty space during the summer that I've been dreading.  (I plan to homeschool year-round, too.)

So for the past week or so I've been planning.  I'm going to stick with the Montessori method and materials for the most part because it is what both Sam and I know and because, obviously, I think it is the best kind of pre-school education.  Along with advice from a few friends, I'm working almost exclusively from Elizabeth Hainstock's Teaching Montessori in the Home: The Pre-school Years.  I also plan to use some activities from June R. Oberlander's Slow and Steady, Get Me Ready.  (Both are indispensible books for educational activities from 0-5 years old.)   Please don't hesitate to give me any suggestions or pointers in the comments, if you have experience.

I'm going to try a two hour work cycle, three days a week to start, but we'll back off of that if it is too much in the beginning.  If it goes well, we might increase the amount of school, but this is supposed to be fun and low-pressure.  However, school time is going to be clearly defined; we will start right after breakfast, we will be dressed, and we will have a dedicated school area in the house.  I have plans for a special (kid-sized) table and chairs, a few bookshelves for the materials which will be closed off during the rest of the day, and a rug for working on the floor.  We'll start with circle time (15 minutes?), which I hope will put us both in the right mind-set.  Some activities I'm considering for circle time are:

• Reading (will try non-fiction, descriptive library books instead of her usual fiction)


• The silence game


• Days of the week (memorization through song or rhyme)


• Months of the year (memorization through song or rhyme)


• Counting (memorization)


• Other, new songs


• Walking the line


• Walking with a bell without ringing it (one of my most distinct memories from my own Montessori education)

Then we'll spend the balance of the time on independent work.  When Sam doesn't need me, I plan to read a book on the sofa nearby and watch her out of the corner of my eye.  Here is the menu of activities that I've come up with so far, with links to descriptions of the work in many cases.  (The page numbers are all from Hainstock, except for SAS which refers to the Oberlander book - they are descriptions of how to demonstrate the task to the child.)

• Cutting paper along a line (pre-prepared paper with various types of lines)


• The hole punch row (SAS, pg 192)


• Polishing pennies with lemon juice.  Include squeezing the lemons into the water. (Come up with my own demonstration by practicing myself first)


• Phonetic object box


• Pouring (pg 24, and try it with a funnel into a slim vase)


• Scooping (Need to find or come up with a specific process)


• Gluing (Need to find or come up with a process)


• Washing doll clothes (Need to find or come up with a process)


• Washing baby doll (Need to find or come up with a process)


• Largest to smallest 


• Dressing frames (pg 23)


• Metal insets (pg 64)


• Washing dishes (use her tea set, pg 30)


• Sweeping the floor (try the basement or living room, pg 34)


• Bead stringing (use set she already has, pg 39)


• Using a dropper (pg 41)


• Puzzles (do it once myself then allow her to do it herself)


• Instead of the Pink Tower, use stacking cups (pg 49)


• Sandpaper letters (pg 70 and 74 when more advanced)


• Number rods (pg 80)


• Home made spindle box  (AFTER number rods, pg 81)

We may not need all of these, or we may need a lot more for the summer, but this is what I'll start with.  Most of these activities are things that I know she is already doing in school, but which will probably still challenge and interest her.

I'm not much of a make-it-yourself kind of person, so I had to buy some of the materials.  I bought the metal insets, the sandpaper letters, a puzzle, and the dressing frames.  Everything else uses materials that I already have or can be fashioned from other, common household objects.  (I'll make my own spindle box and spindles from an egg carton and marbles or pasta or something, but that's about the extent of my craftiness.) 

In doing this research, I came across this lovely video that explains the idea behind the "practical life" exercises in a Montessori school.  (Oh my god, what a beautiful environment in this school!)  It also includes a detailed demonstration of the bow tying dressing board, which I think shows how Montessori is fundamentally different from so many other pre-schools.  From what I gather, many pre-schools teach practical skills.  But in Montessori, each skill is isolated and then placed into a specific order, each movement is precise, time is allowed for as much practice as the child needs, and, of course, the child can work independently after a few demonstrations.  Montessori is not all about "freedom" and self-expression.  I believe the Montessori Method does foster independence and creative thinking, but only by means of teaching a child how to master himself and his environment.  And there are specific, objective ways to accomplish this.

Reading Update

I haven't written much about Sammy's progress with reading because she hasn't been making much progress.  She learned her letters and letter sounds very early but then she plateaued.

She seemed to be stuck on the isolation of the sounds in words.  She was able to identify the first letter of any particular word back in the fall, but moving on to the last sound or the middle sound has been a challenge.  She'd occasionally spell a word, but it was never consistent.  One word she has spelled quite a few times is "red."  I was never sure why.

I actually haven't been working on it much with her; she has been doing a lot of work with letters and sounds at school to keep up what she already knows, and if she wasn't ready to move on, I wasn't going to push it.  Her brain probably just couldn't isolate those sound yet, or maybe she was just adjusting to the way they teach her in school.  Her progress stopped right around that same time.  None of this ever concerned me - it's just something I noted.

She's recently started making progress again.  She has started telling me the first letters of words more often and without prompting, so I know her interest is high again.  (No matter how many times I correct her, she likes to tell me B STARTS WITH BALL and C STARTS WITH CAT.)  When we play our games (from Montessori Read and Write: A Parent's Guide to Literacy for Children
by Lynn Lawrence), she now seems to be able to identify more of the sounds.  She might get them in the wrong order, and she still needs a lot of help, but I can see that she is able to recognize that there are multiple sounds in words.  She has also become very excited to learn that double-e says "eeeee" as in pee, and double-o says "ooooo" as in poo.

Sidewalk chalk has always been a great way for us to sound out words.  I'll pick a word and she'll tell me what letters to write.  Yesterday, she spelled "grass" (G-R-A-S) and "green" (spelled correctly) and "shoe" (S-H-O-O).  I picked the words with the double e's and o's on purpose since she likes them so much.

I felt so good about this phonetic approach when I found today, in Sammy's school folder, her moveable alphabet book (the teacher writes out the words that the child spells with wood cut-out letters) containing:

• yelo


• bloo


• red


• green


• pinc


• gold

It's pretty funny because the colors were some of her first spoken words, and now they are becoming some of her first read/written words.  I swear, this kid already has a hierarchy of values and she acts on it!

Montessori Observation

I spent about an hour in Sammy's Montessori classroom this morning.  It was great to see her in action in her new environment, but it was hard to tell if she was acting differently because I was there.  I was hoping that she would go off on her own and do some work without me, but she wanted to show me everything.  She showed me how to do the brown stairs (teaches height and width), the red rods (teaches length), and the moveable alphabet (pre-reading).  We also had a snack together, which was prepared by Sammy and an older classmate.

As always happens when visiting a Montessori classroom, I was struck most by the way the children interacted with each other.  The atmosphere in that classroom was one of benevolence and cooperation, which is exactly the opposite of what we are all taught to expect from children.  Children are supposed to be little "selfish" heathens who need to be tamed.  They are expected to treat others badly until we pound it into them that they must share and be polite.  The children in Sammy's class were not perfect.  There were times when others encroached on Sammy's work, or something was grabbed at, but these were the exceptions.  The teacher had to step in once that I noticed, to remind the children not to touch another's work.  ("Work" is what the Montessori materials are called.) 

I also noticed that most of the children were smiling and friendly to each other, and to me.  One boy asked if I remembered his name, since we had met before.  He beamed when I did, indeed.  (The children addressed each other by name quite often.)  Other children told me how Sammy needed help carrying the biggest blocks, or how they liked to have a snack with her.  Since I did not know how to help Sammy do her work in the proper way, I was instructed by the children not to sit on the rug, but next to it, and that the rods needed to be aligned vertically on the rug, not horizontally.  These instructions were not the bossy behavior you sometimes see with children (including my own) but sincere help and assistance.  I love the Montessori combination of great freedom for the children, but with instruction and expectations for the proper way to use things.  It is not the freedom of subjectivism, but the freedom of trust and respect.

Sammy and I arrived early so I saw how the children filtered in.  The teachers greeted the newcomers, but there was no need for them to get up to tell the children what to do.  The kids just hung up their coats and went right to work.  Some worked independently; others worked in groups.  The teachers gave lessons or read books to small groups that formed organically.  I didn't stay for "circle time" which is when the whole class does some kind of activity together.  I might want to go again in the later part of the morning to observe that.

One final thing I noted was how big and clumsy I felt in that classroom, with all of its child-sized things.  It made me realize concretely how uncomfortable and frustrated children must feel with all of the adult-sized things that surround them.  I don't believe in turning one's home into a full Montessori environment, but it must be such a wonderful relief for the kids to enter that world designed for them each day.

A Little Thing

Sammy just taught me how to make a neat pile of cards.  She has some small, square pieces of cardboard that are part of a board game.  She collected seven of them and spread them out.  Then she placed each one in a neat stack.  She picked up the whole stack and tapped the edge on the table to line up the cards.  She rubbed her finger over the top edge of the stack to make sure the cards were aligned.  Then she said,

THAT'S HOW WE DO IT.  NOW IT'S YOUR TURN. 

I love Montessori!

More Evidence of Montessori at Work

Here are some new things that Samantha is doing, which I can only attribute to her 2 weeks in Montessori.

• Sammy has started to write her letters.  She mostly draws individual squiggles which look like "c's" and "u's" and she'll "read" them:  A, EF, GEE, EM, ESS, DEE.  THAT SPELLS JINX!  But she has written and identified a recognizable "u," "w," "t" and a "j." 


• She tried to do a headstand last night.


• Looking at a blob of soap on her hand, she said, LOOK, MOMMY!  AN OVAL!  And she was right.


• She rolls up or folds every towel and washcloth in sight.


• When she is putting away her toys, she doesn't want any help, and she doesn't even want any words to help her:  NO, MOMMY, DON'T TALK.  I'LL DO IT MYSELF.

And my favorite:

• MOMMY, I'M GOING TO PUT THE STRING ON THE PAPER AND USE THE CRAYON UNDER IT.  DON'T TOUCH, OK, MOMMY?  I'M GOING TO DO SOME WORK.

A Little Thing

When Sammy attended day care, she'd sometimes come home with a new "skill" such as reciting the days of the week or naming the seasons.  After attending Montessori for 2 weeks, she has already come home with new skills such as shaking her hands over the sink after washing them to get most of the water off, folding, and going to the potty without stripping completely naked.  Practical life, indeed!

Avoiding Evasion

Rational Jenn wrote today about one way children learn to evade:  their parents implicitly teach it to them by Parenting by Authority.  To Parent by Authority is to expect obedience from your children.  “Because I said so,” is the leitmotif of this parenting style.  Sure, we may all do this on occasion.  Each time we do it, it is a mistake,  but the real harm comes when a child is implicitly told over and over again that what he perceives, thinks, feels, and judges, is irrelevant – that what matters is what the authority figure demands.

I’ve been thinking about the same issue, but in regard to education.  Since Sammy started Montessori, I’ve been reacquainting myself with all the good reasons I had for choosing this type of school for her.  One of those reasons is that Montessori is the only widely available educational system that does not Educate by Authority.

Everything about standard schools is geared towards obedience.  Teachers decide what the students will learn, when and by what method.  Grades are the major form of feedback, but they do not measure everything the student has learned, only what the teacher has decided is important.  There is no freedom for the student to pursue a special interest deeply.  Busywork replaces the quest for real understanding.  One of the worst features of standard school is the system of grading on a curve, which pits students against each other in unhealthy competition, where one gains at the expense of another, and actual achievement in relation to reality is irrelevant.

Everything about Montessori is geared toward independence.  Students interact primarily with their environment, not with the teacher.  The students enter a prepared environment of materials that are appropriate for their age.  They are free to choose whatever “work” interests them at the moment, focusing on it for as long as it interests them.  The teachers are guides, serving only to demonstrate the use of the materials when necessary, or to gently point a floundering child in the direction of purposeful activity.  For preschoolers, almost all work is hands-on.  At this age, the students do not have the capacity to connect abstract lecture to concrete reality, at least not when learning something brand new.  They need to learn with the hand as well as with the mind.

The Montessori method recognizes that external reward systems such as grades are not necessary, and even harmful.  Children naturally want to learn.  Anyone who has observed small children can see this.  The reward for good work is in the work itself, and in the accomplishment.  Montessori materials are self-correcting – the children know whether they have done the work correctly without relying on a teacher’s stamp of approval.  The blocks of diminishing size must be stacked up from biggest to smallest or the tower will not stand.  The cylinders of diminishing size must be placed in the proper holes, or they will not all fit in the puzzle. 

Discipline in a Montessori school is almost a non-issue.  There is no need for children to sit quietly and listen to a teacher.  They are free to roam about the classroom and to interact with each other as they see fit.  Because the work holds their interest, they are generally focused on a task, and not seeking attention or looking for an outlet for their energies.  The rules that are in place are natural, for the purpose of working in a group setting: children must never interrupt others’ work, must put their materials away when finished, and generally follow the rules of social decorum that adults do.  But within those limits, they have a great deal of freedom.

One important freedom Montessori children have is the freedom to make mistakes.  Instead of a big red "X" on their paper, children who make mistakes get feedback from reality:  from the materials they are using.  If a child tries to stack the blocks and fails, he is not judged by any other person.  The tower just falls.  That is enough.  His own, internal motivation is what will drive him to try again, and his primary guide is his own mind.  He must make the connection that the smaller blocks go on top before he can build the tower.  He may observe the other students and possibly the teacher building the tower, but nobody is telling him what to do.  He is free to try again immediately or to wait.  There is no external pressure motivating him.

This trust in children’s innate (or, I would prefer to say, natural) desire to learn, to achieve, and to grow – in short, to be good – is analogous to the Positive Discipline principle of Assuming Positive Intent.  You should assume, barring any evidence to the contrary, that your child is trying to solve a problem but just doesn’t have the skills yet, or has forgotten how.  For example, if your toddler is banging his fork on the table, he’s probably not trying to irritate you.  He might be hungry and not know how else to tell you, or he might be exploring the sound or the feel of the vibration of the fork.  Your job is not to discipline him, but to try to read his signals with the assumption of positive intent, and to guide him towards the actions that will accomplish what he wants.  A teacher’s job should not be to force learning upon the child.  The child already wants to learn.  What he needs is freedom within limits, and guidance.

Why are Parenting by Authority and Educating by Authority so prevalent?  What in the world makes anybody think that children need to be disciplined and forced to learn?  There is so much evidence against this, that I can only guess that a deeply rooted premise is at work, and I suspect that it is the idea of Original Sin.  I’d like to explore this idea more.  I think it has enormous implications for parenting and education.  I know that I have unconsciously accepted this premise.  I fight it consciously, but it will take a lot more work to fully root it out.  But I already see myself thinking about ways I might homeschool differently that I envision it now.  Instead of telling Sammy what subject we will study for a semester, I may purchase all the materials I think are appropriate and set them up in a way that she can begin to explore them on her own, and see where it leads.  I might break up the day into two, 3-hour study blocks, as they do in Montessori.  I might let Sammy go a whole week studying only one subject, or I might require only that math be studied every day.  I’m not sure yet.  But I see two principles that can guide me:  Let Reality be the Judge, and Trust Internal Motivation.

A Little Thing

My husband, Adam, who is a law professor, was talking to one of his students the other day and the subject of Montessori came up.  The student told Adam, "Yes, I'm very interested in sending my future children to Montessori.  I learned about it from reading Ayn Rand."  When Adam told her that he was an Objectivist, she was thrilled and said, "I'm going to have to tell [another student].  He loves Ayn Rand, too!"

Objectivism is no longer a fringe movement, but a force in our culture.  And admirers of Ayn Rand are everywhere.  I see it in anecdotes like this all the time, but the Ayn Rand Institute's statistics on book sales, successes in academia, and media exposure are the real evidence.  This is an exciting time!

First Week of Montessori

Sammy is officially a Montessori student! 

She just finished her first week of school.  This week, the new students only attended for 2 hours a day to give them a chance to settle in with a bit less pressure, and to give the older kids some time without all the chaos of the little ones.  Sammy is probably the youngest in her class, I imagine, having just turned 3 a couple of weeks ago, but, for once, I don’t feel like she is way too small or out of place. 

I won’t get to visit the class for at least 6 weeks so I can’t report much about what Sammy is doing as her work.  I might get some kind of report in her Friday folder which comes home each week, but I’m not sure about that – the only thing in this week’s folder was information on a fundraising event.

What I have seen is drop-off and pick-up.  Sammy has been fine overall with leaving me to go to her new school.  We’re supposed to drop the kids off at the curb, where a teacher comes to get them and bring them to class.  At the open house last week, the Directress said that on the first day they would allow parents to walk their kids to the front door or to the classroom, but that it was discouraged, both for efficiency’s sake and because it is actually easier for the children to separate at the car.  I think every parent who has taken the time to find this pre-school for their child and has spent the high cost of tuition should have done enough research to know Rule Number One of separation:  Don’t make a big deal of it!  You tell the child what will happen and then when it does, you say, “Bye bye. Have a nice morning.  I’ll see you at noon.”  And you leave.  Prolonging it is counterproductive.  It tells the child that you are not comfortable parting from her and sends the message that you don’t fully trust the people who will be taking care of her.  I’m sorry, but this is so basic.  There was no way I was going to walk Sammy in.  We were going to start as we meant to go on.  But at the open house, one doofus actually asked if he could come and sit in the classroom for 20 minutes on the first morning!  He was told, “no,” which made me feel pretty good about the school I had chosen.

Still, on the first day when we arrived, there were a few cars in line but many more people could be seen walking their children in from the parking lot.  Because they did this, the line-up system didn’t work.  There were so many people walking their kids in the front door that there weren’t enough teachers to take them away quickly, and the car line-up was ignored.  I can’t really blame the teachers – they were inundated with crying children whom they wanted to whisk away as quickly as possible, while the kids in the cars had to wait, but at least they weren’t at that critical moment of separation.  Of course, I didn’t realize exactly what was going on, and after 5 minutes of no movement in the line, the mom in front of me came back and said that the front car had been there for almost 20 minutes and that we might as well park and walk the kids in.  I didn’t see any choice, although later I found out that the line did start moving a few minutes later.  So we parked and I walked Sammy in and it was a disaster.  Well, it wasn't that bad, but she twice dropped the plant that she had brought in as a class gift (a suggestion from the teachers), and stopped at the front door, refusing to walk in on her own power.  I was carrying so much stuff that I could not pick her up and we blocked the door for a good minute.  She wasn’t crying, just refusing to enter and whining, but it was not the way I wanted to start her first day.  I wish they had told us at the open house to stick with the line no matter what and that they would eventually get to us.  They did say it might take “a few more minutes than usual” the first couple of days, but that was an understatement and it caused a lot of confusion.  Well, in the end, it didn’t matter.  The next day drop off went without a hitch and Sammy’s been happy to go to school ever since.

Because the youngest children were leaving early this week, they were taken out to the playground for pickup time each day.  I watched Sammy’s attitude change throughout the week when I picked her up.  The first day, she was on the swing with the teacher pushing her.  The next, she was on the swing by herself.  The third day, she was not near a teacher and she came running to me when she saw me, saying MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY!  She wasn’t relieved to see me, she was excited to show me what she had been doing.  She showed me the slide and the sandbox and the swings and the playhouse.  The fourth day it rained and she was brought out to my car, happy as a clam.  And the fifth, she again came running to me, and I watched her interact with some of the older children.

I think that being in a mixed-age class is going to be one of the most important parts of the Montessori experience.  It was important for Sammy to be around her peers in day care – she learned a lot (good and bad) from being with kids in her own age group.  But the older Montessori children are true role models.  Sammy likes older kids.  She often chooses them over her own aged kids at playgrounds and at the supermarket.

We have noticed even a bit more independence from Sammy this week.  She is picking up her toys without being told occasionally, and there seems to be a process for washing her hands now, instead of the half-hour long play session a hand-washing normally is for her.  We’ll see if those things continue.

This transition has been very smooth.  (Well, it’s been very difficult for me in terms of my schedule.  I can’t figure out when to shower or how to deal with my even more fractured time.  It will help when we move to a 3 hour day next week.)  But for Sammy, it’s been pretty painless, and I almost forgot to take note of what a huge achievement this is for her and for me.  I thought about sending a child to Montessori long before I even decided to have a child.  My own experience at Montessori (I attended through age 11) played a big role in my own character development.  Then I read what Ayn Rand had to say about Montessori, and I read Montessori’s own works.  I took classes from a Montessori-trained parenting coach, and I did a lot of hard work and research to find the right Montessori school in our area.  I didn’t know how it would turn out.  I think there are probably some kids for whom Montessori is not a good fit.  Even though that’s probably rare, I tried to keep an open mind about whether this would be right for my daughter.  I can say with confidence after only one week that I now know I made the right choice.  It already shows.  I can’t wait to see Sammy in that classroom filled with all the materials that bring back my own childhood memories – the moveable alphabet, the math beads, the geography puzzles.  I can’t wait to see what she will learn and how she will grow.  I know she is going to thrive there, and that this is the best beginning for her formal education that I could give her.  Hurray for Montessori!

A Little Thing

I was dropping Sammy off at Montessori.  It's a car line-up and the teachers come out to the curb to bring each child in the building individually.  The teacher tried to pick Sammy up out of her car seat and Sammy said, NO!  I DO IT MYSELF!  The teacher watched as Sammy got out of the car on her own and said, "Now there's a perfect Montessori student."

Reading Update

Yesterday, Samantha spelled the words "Sam," "cat," "Adam" and "Jinx."  Adam wrote them on the ground with sidewalk chalk as they sounded them out together.  She needed help isolating the sounds, but as soon as she heard the sound, she knew what letter it was.  The only one she didn't get was the "i" in Jinx because she's only learned the short "i" sound so far.

We've continued to use Starfall and we also practice while driving around town or at meals.  Sam knows all the standard letter sounds now, although she'll still forget "l" and "r" sometimes, mostly because she has a hard time pronouncing them.  I do think that this work of isolating sounds is going to help her pronunciation, and even her vocabulary because she'll be able to distinguish words more clearly now.  I didn't think she'd be able to reverse the process and name the letters based on the sound - we've never worked on that directly - but she did it with ease. She is also "reading" everything she sees - food packaging, signs on the road, stuff that comes in the mail.  Usually "reading" means that she'll name some of the letters and maybe make their sounds.  Sometimes it means opening a book she knows well and telling the story from memory as she turns the pages.  I thought it was cute when Sam insisted that there was an "x" on my computer screen and it took me a while to figure out she meant the red "x" icon to close the window.

Next, I'm going to try reading Montessori Read and Write, by Lynn Lawrence, and next month I'll talk to Sam's Montessori teacher about where to go from here.  It's amazing to see Sam learning so much so quickly, and taking such obvious pleasure in the process.

Taking Turns

Samantha is learning how to take turns!  After a few Montessori classes, I can see the light bulb going off.  

She really likes to play with a particular toy at Montessori:  a low, flat box full of hard clay, with golf tees and a mallet with which to pound them into the clay.  This week, the clay toy came to her attention when she saw another girl pick it up.  She went over to grab at it, and I did my usual explanation of how the other girl had chosen it and Sam could have a turn when she was finished.  Sam didn't protest, and went on to work on a puzzle.  But in the middle of it, she leapt down from her chair and raced away.  When I looked up, I saw that she was picking up the clay toy just as the other girl returned it to its shelf.  She had her eye on that toy the whole time!  And since that lesson was the most important at the moment, I didn't call her back to put away the puzzle, but went with her and told her that THAT was called taking turns.  Ok, so I probably praised her too.  I'm still working on less praise and more description.  But I was so pleased!

Toddler Montessori

Samantha and I went to our first Montessori class today.  Since it is a 7-week session designed for toddlers, I thought that it would be full of moms and kids who were starting pre-school in the fall, just like me and Sam, but the school starts taking toddlers into this class as soon as they can walk, and some people repeat the 7-week session, so the ages ranged from 15 months to just-turned-three, and most of the kids had been to prior sessions.  I think there were about 8 children there today, but it varies from week to week.

The class was held in a room set up just like a Montessori classroom, but geared just a bit younger.  There are rolled up mats which the children use to define their own work space on the floor.  If they prefer a table, there are a few, all with just two chairs, one for mommy and one for the child.  There is a potty on the floor in the corner, but no pressure to use it.  The materials/toys are similar to a primary Montessori class, but a bit simpler.  Everything is on low shelves and the children pick what interests them, or they watch other children. There is also a big slide for those kids who just need to get their energy out.  There is a snack table with just two chairs, so the kids must take turns.  Bananas, plastic knives, napkins, cups and a pitcher of water are nearby, to be used whenever hunger strikes.  The moms stay with or near the children, guiding them in the proper use of the materials (but in a more informal way than a primary class) and the one teacher floats about and makes suggestions as necessary.  The last 15 minutes of the 1.5 hour class is "circle time" for singing a few songs as a group.  It's a good signal that class is about to end.

The materials they have are wonderful - I wanted to play with everything myself!  They have dozens of items: peg boards, scissors and paper, puzzles, paper and glue, a sensory table with beans, and Sam's favorite: a small box with 5 beautiful marbled rocks in different colors.  She would shake the box and pour the rocks out on to the table in a controlled fashion, sort of like she was playing craps.  Then she would carefully put the 5 rocks in a line.  Then she would pick them up one at a time and drop them back in the box.  She repeated this exercise many times.  Who would have guessed that this would be the most interesting thing in the room?

Sam immediately understood the concept of taking one toy at a time, bringing it to a table or mat, and then returning it when finished.  She needed a reminder to put things away a couple of times, but it was great to see that this was not a foreign concept to her.  We clean up at home, but there is no one-toy-at-a-time rule and things get pretty messy every day.

Sam didn't do as well with respecting others' work.  She pushed and grabbed a few times.  Although this is "normal," I'm really looking forward to more of this structured Montessori time where I can work on this with her.  I knew this was one big drawback to putting her in day care, where the practice seems to be to yell loud instructions across the room when a child does something really flagrant, like pushing another kid hard enough for him to fall down.  I'm not worried about Samantha in this area, though.  She is a very empathetic and orderly child and I'm sure with the right guidance, she'll get the idea of taking turns and respecting others.

Just before circle time, the teacher took a bell and walked in a circle around the carpet.  The bell is one of my strongest memories from my own days in Montessori.  At circle time, we'd play "pass the bell."  While sitting in a very large circle (well, we sat in a square around a carpet), one child would get the bell and have to walk with it to a child on another edge, without allowing the bell to ring, and then hand it to the next child. It was an exercise in concentration and body-control.  Today, the oldest girl in the class, who has been to a few primary classes, took the bell and tried to walk without ringing it.  I didn't realize this was a Montessori tradition - I thought it was just my own particular teacher's invention. 

Beyond all the other reasons I want Samantha to go to Montessori, it will be wonderful to share all of these traditions with her.  I look foward to all the memories that will surface in me as I watch her go through it.

Independence

I just mailed the check to secure Samantha's spot in the Montessori school we chose.  I can't wait for her to start.  And it turns out, I don't have to.  They have a toddler program.  Starting Wednesday, once a week for 7 weeks, Sam will go to Montessori with me for about an hour and a half.   This is the perfect reason to reduce her day care time to 2 half days per week, which I've been wanting to do anyway to save money and also because I just don't like this new day care as much as her first one.

I wish we could attend the Montessori program right before the school year starts, but they don't have any summer programs at this school.  Still, it's a good way for her to get used to the environment, and I'll bet that I get some good ideas for nurturing her independence at home.  Speaking of which, check out this video (HT: Principled Parent) of a 20-month-old being raised by two Montessori-trained parents.  It's a bit long but if you've never seen young toddlers acting this way, you might need the time to pick your jaw up off the floor.



I took notes, and here are the things I might try at home:

• Put Sam's mattress on the floor.  We were just about to go from crib to toddler bed, so I'll consider this option. 


• Put a step near her dining chair with booster seat so that she can climb up and down herself.  I've been struggling with how to help her do this independently, but I never thought of a stool for some reason.  (Sam is probably the same size as the 20-month-old in the video, so she is just too small to do many things kids her age normally do.)


• Set up a pitcher of water and cup on a low shelf in the kitchen for her to get her own drinks.  She is really bad at pouring so this will be good practice.


• Get her a backpack.  If a 20-month-old can carry one, even little Sam can too.

We've also always struggled with washing hands.  Sam loves to wash her hands and hates it when we help, but she can't reach any sinks in the house, even when on a high stool.  I have to pull out the retractable faucet in the kitchen and she gets very angry about that.  (And when the sink is full of dirty dishes she just doesn't get to wash her hands at all).  When we visited the Montessori school, we realized all we have to do is to set out a bowl of water, soap, sponge, and towel.  Sometimes you just don't see the obvious solution!

One other thing I would note from that video:  I would never spend the amount of time necessary for Sam to "help" me in the kitchen as much as Edison did.  I try to let her help in ways that actually help me.  I'll do a little extra work, like helping her wash her hands after cracking an egg, or asking her to get things for me from the cabinets, but spending that kind of time would be a sacrifice for me.  (I really have to finish my introductory post on Selfish Parenting.)  At a certain point, it feels very forced to let a child "help" when they are not really helping.  Edison seemed to do a good job, but when I've had Sam do similar things she just wants to play with the food.  She'll help me wipe and dust and sweep all day, but when food is around she just wants to rub it all over her face.  Maybe that's just a difference in different kids, but I'm not going for that one.