"Unfold, leaf by leaf. Become more and more intimate with life. Ask no cold question of any joyous thing. Go to all living things gently, listening for the wonder of the breath and the heartbeat. Ask all successful and happy creatures for a clue."

--Stuart P. Sherman

Things I love about primary aged children.

There are things that I particularly love about working with children ages 3-6.
Although my mind and way of being would probably better suit me in a classroom full of elementary age children with their questions about the universe, I think I belong with the ones who are historyless, the present ones. 

That's the first thing. Children of this age group are unforgivingly present. Being with them requires quality of attention, no mental multitasking. They teach me constantly to drop the six other things I'm thinking about to really see and be where I am with them. The joys are enormous, the sadnesses cavernous, it is transparent and wild, like the presence of animals.  Wildness, yes. The classroom is a wilderness.

If you look hard enough, but really not that hard, you can see that  forgiveness is their way of being at this age. They have a natural compassion. When do we lose that capacity in growing up? How many bruises before we learn to carry grudges and fear? I watch the children in their unfiltered learning process, constantly making mistakes, getting up over and over and over again. Hurting each other and making up a dozen times a day. Capable of full absolution to themselves and others. Their language for compassion is so much more subtle than that of adults (like Eskimos have all those words for snow, little children have a million ways to say "sorry.") When do we forget those subtle ways?

There is such a boldness in their way of learning. Unafraid as they pick up a new language, a movement, a skill. They try and try and try as long as I don't get in the way to offer judgement or help when it is unasked for. I'd love to learn like that again, without the self consciousness and doubt. With such conviction. To regain those powers of childhood, even for moments of the day. 

Lunch

We have a lunch program at our school, which is a great responsibility. We've run it for seven years and it has had its ups and downs. Being in control of all the snacks and lunches in the children's day means we also have great power in helping them create a varied palate and solid nutritional habits. That's all great when children are willing to eat most of what we provide. Brown bread? Sure! Tomatoes? Yay! Spinach? Sure!

However, at the beginning of the year we are often confronted with children who are not only in the process developing trust in the adults at school and the other children, but on top of it, are only becoming familiar and trusting of our foods. This process can take some time.

We've tweaked and varied our approach to the presentation of our meals and lunch routine always with the intention of helping the children become independent in their ability to enjoy a healthy meal. I found a website a few weeks ago that described in a way I found very helpful and in accordance with Montessori, the relationship between adults and children when it comes to food. (See below)

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Ellyn Satter's Division of Responsibility in Feeding
From: http://ellynsatterinstitute.org/dor/divisionofresponsibilityinfeeding.php


Children develop eating competence step-by-step throughout the growing-up years when they are fed according to a stage-appropriate division of responsibility. At every stage, parents take leadership with feeding and let the child be self-directed with eating.

The division of responsibility for infants:

• The parent is responsible for what
• The child is responsible for how much (and everything else)

Parents choose breast- or formula- feeding, help the infant be calm and organized, then feed smoothly, paying attention to information coming from the baby about timing, tempo, frequency, and amounts.

The division of responsibility for older babies making the transition to family food

• The parent is still responsible for what, and is becoming responsible for when and where the child is fed.
• The child is still and always responsible for how much and whether to eat the foods offered by the parent.

Based on what the child can do, not on how old s/he is, parents guide the child’s transition from nipple feeding through semi-solids, then thick-and-lumpy food, to finger food at family meals.

The division of responsibility for toddlers through adolescents:

• The parent is responsible for what, when, where
• The child is responsible for how much and whether

Fundamental to parents’ jobs is trusting children to decide how much and whether to eat. If parents do their jobs with feeding, children do their jobs with eating:
Parents' feeding jobs:

• Choose and prepare the food
• Provide regular meals and snacks
• Make eating times pleasant
• Show children what they have to learn about food and mealtime behavior
• Be considerate of children’s food inexperience without catering to likes and dislikes
• Not let children have food or beverages (except for water) between meal and snack times
• Let children grow up to get bodies that are right for them

Children's eating jobs:

• Children decide how much they will eat or whether to eat at all
• They will eat the amount they need (according to their body needs)
• They will learn to eat the food their parents eat if that is what is offered
  
• They will grow predictably
• They will learn to behave well at mealtime (with the example and help of their parents)

For more about feeding, see Ellyn Satter’s Child of Mine: Feeding with Love and Good Sense.

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We've changed our lunch routine over the years and found some key helpful aspects:

*We have lunch immediately after the 3 hour morning work period at 11:45am.

*A pair of alternating older children serve the others as they arrive. The meal is served complete on one plate or bowl, a small dessert bowl (always fruit), and a glass of water. Serving in this style allows children to eat what they enjoy most first and whet their appetite for the other things on their plates. It hast also considerably cut down on waste, and created a more relaxed atmosphere since there is no confusion about whether or not there will be seconds.

*Children eat as much or as little of what is offered. We don't negotiate about foods. Our way to encourage tasting is to offer (almost daily) tasting lessons in the classroom that are related to foods we will offer later at lunch.

*We've created a rotating 9 week menu that's based on simple, nutritious, and whole foods. The rotating menu creates enough predictability and familiarity for the children with the items offered which hopefully will lead to independence.

*Three children sit at each table, instead of our former long table serving setting. This creates a more intimate atmosphere and really sweet socializing among the children in each small table. The volume of our lunchtime is much lower because of this!

By the time I make it to the lunchroom, there is a soft buzz as children converse, eat and look out of our windows. It is a pleasant meal!

We've been working a lot more diligently on grace and courtesy for lunchtime which has also helped remarkably with independence during eating and cleaning up. Sometimes it just takes this many years to figure out something that works.

I am me

by Virginia Satir

In all the world, there is no one else exactly like me
Everything that comes out of me is authentically me
Because I alone chose it – I own everything about me
My body, my feelings, my mouth, my voice, all my actions,
Whether they be to others or to myself – I own my fantasies,
My dreams, my hopes, my fears – I own all my triumphs and
Successes, all my failures and mistakes Because I own all of
Me, I can become intimately acquainted with me – by so doing
I can love me and be friendly with me in all my parts – I know
There are aspects about myself that puzzle me, and other
Aspects that I do not know – but as long as I am
Friendly and loving to myself, I can courageously
And hopefully look for solutions to the puzzles
And for ways to find out more about me – However I
Look and sound, whatever I say and do, and whatever
I think and feel at a given moment in time is authentically
Me – If later some parts of how I looked, sounded, thought
And felt turn out to be unfitting, I can discard that which is
Unfitting, keep the rest, and invent something new for that
Which I discarded – I can see, hear, feel, think, say, and do
I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be
Productive to make sense and order out of the world of
People and things outside of me – I own me, and
therefore I can engineer me – I am me and
I AM OKAY

(thank you Ursula)

Updated Assistant's Album

The role of the assistant in the classroom is often debated in the Montessori circles that I've encountered. In our bilingual school, because the assistant has a fundamental role in introducing the children to the Dutch language, her role is probably more active than it would be in other scenarios. I've personally always felt that an empowered and knowledgeable assistant is best equipped to help me carry out my role in the environment. Therefore, we take as much time as we can to practice and develop her skills.

A year ago I shared several documents that made up the Assistant's Album that we used in training our assistants. This year I spent some time during the summer honing its components and I like the new version much better.

Here is what it includes:

Introduction to the Montessori Method:
*About Maria Montessori (AMI Handout)
*Montessori vs. Traditional (AMI Handout)
*The prepared environment (AMI Handout)
*AMI Standards (AMI Handout)

Role of the Assistant:
*Assistant's Daily schedule
*Assistant's Training and introduction to the classroom (This is a bullet point list that takes us a whole morning to cover.)
*Assistant's Lessons (This is a list of the group games and lessons the assistant can carry out during the work period. It takes us about two sessions to cover all these lessons.)
*Presentations for each lesson.
*Assistant's end of the day tasks

*Communication Skills (One morning session to cover)
*Observation Skills (One morning session to cover)
*Montessori's Ten Commandments

Official School Documents:
*Staff Handbook
*Calendar
*Phone List

I hope these documents can be of help to others out there in creating motivated, empowered and happy assistants out there. You can find links to the pdfs HERE.

Again, a disclaimer that I am not a trainer, and this was not taught to me in my training, but in my years of work in the classroom it has proved helpful to me and to all the (brave) women who have worked with me in my room.

Mistakes.

"And now go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here."

~ Neil Gaiman

"Free to Learn"

Some quotes I loved from the book "Free to Learn" by Peter Gray, all in defense of play:

"Play is nature's way of ensuring that young mammals, including young humans, will practice and become good at the skills they need to develop to survive and thrive in their environments."

"Learning, creativity, and problem solving are facilitated by anything that promotes a playful state of mind, and they are inhibited by evaluation, expectation of rewards, or anythign else that destroys a playful state of mind."

"Imagine that you had omnipotent powers and were faced with the problem of how to get young humans and other young mammals to practice the skills they must develop to survive and thrive in their local conditions of life. How might you solve that problem? It is hard to imagine a more effective solution than that of building into their brains a mechanism that makes them want to practice those very skills and that rewards such practice with the experience of joy. That, indeed is the mechanism that natural selection has built, and we refer to the resultant behavior as play. Perhaps play would be more respected if we called it something like "self motivated practice of life skills" but that would remove the lightheartedness from it and thereby reduce its effectiveness. So, we are stuck with the paradox. We must accept play's triviality in order to realize its profundity. "

"Playing with other children, away from adults, is how children learn to make their own decisions, control their emotions and impulses, see from others' perspectives, negotiate differences with others, and make friends. In short, play is how children learn to take control of their lives."

"In play, whether it is the idyllic play we most like to envision or the play described by Eisen [violent play] children bring the realities of their world into a fictional context, where it is safe to confront them, to experience them, and to practice ways of dealing with them. Some people fear that violent play creates violent adults, but in reality the opposite is true. Violence in the adult world leads children, quite properly to play at violence. How else can they prepare themselves emotionally, intellectually, and physically for reality? It is wrong to think that somehow we can reform the world for the future by controlling children's play and controlling what they learn. If we want to reform the world, we have to reform the world; children will follow suit. The children must and will prepare themselves for the real world to which they must adapt to survive."

"Children must feel safe and cared for in order to devote themselves fully to exploring and learning, and children learn best from those with whom they have caring, trusting relationships."

"I doubt there has ever been a human culture, anywhere, at any time, that underestimates children's abilities more than we North Americans do today. Our underestimation becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because by depriving children of freedom, we deprive them of the opportunities they need to learn how to take control of their own behavior and emotions."

Authentic and Sincere

"Children want only two things from us. They want us to be authentic and sincere. "

Paul Epstein  - Observation Course with CGMS

On Wrongness.

From Kathryn Schultz's book "Being Wrong"

Why is it so fun to be right? As pleasures go, it is, after all, a second order one at best. Unlike many of life’s other delights — chocolate, surfing, kissing — it does not enjoy any mainline access to our biochemistry: to our appetites, our adrenal glands, our limbic systems, our swoony hearts. And yet, the thrill of being right is undeniable, universal, and (perhaps most oddly) almost entirely undiscriminating. We can’t enjoy kissing just anyone, but we can relish being right about almost anything.

Our indiscriminate enjoyment of being right is matched by an almost equally indiscriminate feeling that we are right.

A whole lot of us go through life assuming that we are basically right, basically all the time, about basically everything.

As absurd as it sounds when we stop to think about it, our steady state seems to be one of unconsciously assuming that we are very close to omniscient.

If we relish being right and regard it as our natural state, you can imagine how we feel about being wrong. For one thing, we tend to view it as rare and bizarre. For another, it leaves us feeling idiotic and ashamed.

Of all the things we are wrong about, this idea of error might well top the list.

We are wrong about what it means to be wrong. Far from being a sign of intellectual inferiority, the capacity to err is crucial to human cognition. Far from being a moral flaw, it is inextricable from some of our most humane and honorable qualities: empathy, optimism, imagination, conviction, and courage. And far from being a mark of indifference or intolerance, wrongness is a vital part of how we learn and change. Thanks to error, we can revise our understanding of ourselves and amend our ideas about the world.

However disorienting, difficult, or humbling our mistakes might be, it is ultimately wrongness, not rightness, that can teach us who we are.

Happy things in our school garden.

 Keeping in mind at all times that the natural environment where we live tends to look like this:

And that the wind and sun are so relentless that they do this to the vegetation:

It  is not an exaggeration to celebrate when we get a crop of tomatoes of this size:

Or to celebrate that this year we have managed a bed of organic spinach, basil, onions and garlic:

 

 

Another celebration has been flowers from our garden for flower arranging indoors:

 

 Some of this, I suspect is possible because we compost all of our green waste. Today I sifted our compost and all the plants got a fresh layer of organic minerally goodness.

I mean, sure we have parts of our garden that reflect the typical prickly landscape of the Aruban desert.

 

But it is so fun to be able to have an outdoor picnic snack table surrounded by flowers for children to sit and talk, eat, and be happy. 

 

Observation

"Often inexperienced teachers place great importance on teaching and believe that they have done everything necessary when they have demonstrated the use of the materials in a meaningful way. In reality, they are far from the truth because the job of the teacher is rather more important than that. To her falls the task of guiding the development of the child's spirit, and therefore her observations must emerge at the end- and this is their only justification- in her ability to help the child."

Maria Montessori, The child in the Family

"Mostly love, now."

I read this a few nights ago and it gave me so many good feelings.