Gratitude for the Montessori Kindergarten Year

When I am asked to explain the importance of the kindergarten year of a Montessori student I get very passionate. I have the unique experience of being a Montessori parent as well as a Montessori teacher, so I have seen the remarkable metamorphosis of children in my classes, as well as in my own children.

Having taught for many years before my first son reached kindergarten, I knew that a Montessori education worked and I felt it was superior to anything that the other area schools could provide. By that time, I had seen hundreds of children excel in the Montessori program and knew that my own son would be no different. Still though, I had the same concerns that I hear repeated every year from other parents: How will he transition when he leaves Montessori? What if he never “chooses” to learn to read? Is it worth the private school tuition when I can get kindergarten for free?

I am here to say though that year after year, those parents (including myself) share the tremendous sense of success in having chosen Montessori for the Kindergarten year.

The best analogy that I can give for the kindergarten year is that of the building of an archway. When children are three and four in a Montessori classroom they build their foundation of knowledge. As they learn their isolated letter sounds and numbers with the materials, refine their fine motor skills, and learn to be a good member of their community, they are building up the pillars of their archway.  It is during the kindergarten year though that, using the foundation they have built, they can tie all of that knowledge together to create a beautiful, strong support system for their future success.

For those children not continuing in the Montessori program, they still have great pillars of knowledge gained from their preschool years which they will continue to build, but the “coming together” of concrete materials and abstract concepts will not be as strong as the archway could have been.

Over the years I have been fortunate enough to give my children many gifts. We have taken trips, had elaborate birthday parties, and numerous toys. But the one gift that I feel is the most important that I have given them, that they will have with them their whole life, is the gift of their education. And I truly believe that their Montessori foundation, including the kindergarten year, will be with them forever.

Melanie Thiesse

Parent of Nathan (15) and Brandon (9) and

Curriculum Coordinator at The Westmont Montessori School

Parent Involvement: What Skills need to be part of a Daily Routine

Parent Involvement: What Skills Need to be Part of a Daily Routine?

Repost of article by Erika Burton

Parent involvement in early literacy is directly connected to academic achievement. Children need parents to be their reading role models with daily practice in order to navigate successfully through beginning literacy skills. According to research, parents should focus on the words on the page while reading with their preK reader (Evans, Shaw, Bell, 2000).

Here are some strategies for beginning and seasoned readers' literacy success:

•   Point to each word on the page as you read. This beginning literacy strategy will assist children with making print/story/illustration connections. This skill also helps build a child's tracking skills from one line of text to the next one.

•   Read the title and ask your child to make a prediction. Beginning and seasoned readers alike need to make predictions before reading a story. This will go a long way to ensure that a child incorporates previewing and prediction in his or her own reading practices both now and in the future.

•   Take "picture walks." Help your child use the picture clues in most early readers and picture books to tell the story before reading.

•   Model fluency while reading, and bring your own energy and excitement for reading to your child. Both new and seasoned readers struggle with varying pitch, intonation and proper fluctuations when they read aloud. Older readers will benefit from shared reading (taking turns).

•   Ask your child questions after reading every book. Reading comprehension is the reason we read -- to understand. The new CCORE standards assessing U.S. children's readiness for the workplace and college ask children at all grade levels to compare and contrast their understanding of concepts. This takes practice. Help your child explain his or her understanding of any given story in comparison to another. Have your child share a personal experience similar to a problem or theme within a story. Higher-order thinking skills (critical thinking) are skills children are expected to use in both written and oral assessments in school. There is no way for a teacher to ask every child to use a critical thinking skill every day. Parents can.

•   Connect reading and writing if possible. The connection between reading, writing and discussion should be incorporated with daily literacy practice. Have a young child dictate to a parent who writes in a journal or on a sheet of paper. Modeling the formation of sentences aligned with the words of a story is crucial for a child to begin making a neural interconnectedness between reading and writing. A child's process of drawing pictures brings his or her personal creativity toward the story. Sharing these illustrations of experiences and individual interpretations related to the sentence he or she has created on the page is yet another step toward this early balanced literacy approach.

Beginning and lifelong literacy is transformative and constantly growing. However, the process must begin when initially learning to read, and must be as intuitive to a child as when he or she learned to speak. This can happen through incorporating repetition, proper skills and modeling.

ERIKA BURTON'S PROFILE

Practicing and Modeling Empathy

How can we teach our children to be empathetic and not just sympathetic? We role model it ourselves! This is a great illustration of the words of Brene Brown, Ph.D., that remind us to stay connected to those around us by feeling with people.

How Babies and Children are Designed to Learn

Psychologist, Alison Gopnik gave a Ted Talk where she made some bold statements about the minds of babies and children. In it, she explained that while adults are task-oriented and tend to focus like a spotlight on one thing at a time, children have more of a lantern of consciousness, taking in and learning from all of the environment. In this way, she believes that children are actually more conscious than adults.

Experimenting with the environment and learning about it is the job of the child. When adults see this happening we tend to call it "getting in to everything" but it is the true work of childhood.

The Ted Talk, viewable here, is informative, funny, and certainly worth a look. Enjoy! 

Delayed Gratification - Helping Children to Build Self-Discipline and Autonomy

This week's blog is a repost of a parenting article and published with permission from developingcapablechildren.com. Visit their website for more great articles like this!

"You waited until the night before to get your project done, and now you want me to drive to the store to get the materials you need?"


"You're not going anywhere until your room is cleaned. You were supposed to do it three days ago."

"I asked you 20 minutes ago to get your things together for school!"


Wouldn't it have been so much easier if they had just done it right away and gotten it over with? There would have been much less hassle and emotional energy used. You and I can see that as adults because we have learned (and some of us are still learning) the benefits of delayed gratification. The good news is that procrastination is not an inherited trait. It is a learned life skill that can be taught, and is one of the greatest indicators of success for children.

In 1972, a Stanford research project was published, that has become known as the Marshmallow Experiment. In this experiment, the researchers put a child in a room with a single marshmallow. The children were told that if they would wait until the researcher returned to eat the first marshmallow that they would be rewarded with a second marshmallow. Many of the children ate the first marshmallow soon after the researcher left the room, and a few were able to wait patiently until research came back with the second marshmallow. I'm sure this was quite fun to witness.

What made the experiment so well known, however, was the results of tracking the participants in the study for over 40 years. The results of the research are quite remarkable. The children that were able to exhibit the willingness to wait for the second marshmallow were more successful in a broad array of measures, including higher SAT scores, lower levels of substance abuse, stronger social skills (as reported by their parents), better physical health and stress management, as well as a variety of other life measures. In short, the ability to delay gratification proved to be a significant factor, across the board, in how successful these participants were in their lives.

While it may be that some children have a greater inclination towards self-discipline, most of people learn self-discipline through experience. Those experiences come from the child's environment and their experiences in that environment. A home or school environment that provides a consistency and predictability allows children to trust the outcomes of their choices builds a sense of confidence in children that empowers them make decisions for themselves based on what they know will happen and when. (University of Rochester study on the effect of reliable and unreliable experiences can be found here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23063236). Take for example a child whose routine is to finish his homework before watching television at night, and bed time is at 8:30 a.m. And, each night, when he is finished with his homework his parents allow him to turn on the TV until bed time. However, when he doesn't finish his homework, he is not allowed to turn on the TV. If this routine is predictable, what decisions might this boy make in regards to delaying gratification and finishing his homework after school? What might happen if his parents become more arbitrary in allowing him to watch TV, sometimes when his homework is done, and sometimes when it isn't?


Developing Delayed Gratification

• Develop routines that allow children to experience both the logical positive and negative consequences of their choices, without rescuing them or bailing them out or punishing them. The example of the television after homework is a sound example. Another one, is the child who procrastinates in getting dressed in the morning. A routine could be set up where the child's clothes are picked out the night before, and the parent simply lets the child know if they are not dressed before leaving for school that the parents will simply put the clothes in a bag and the child can change at school or in the car (if there is time). As kids get older, the consequences of their decisions are often played out with their peers or outside the home. Let's say an older child is responsible for their laundry. If they forget to do their laundry, consider putting your own feelings of potential embarrassment aside, and allow your child to wear dirty clothes.

• One of the most powerful ways to create an environment of mutual respect and develop the ability to delay gratification is to involve children and adolescents in crating routines and solving problems. Brainstorm ideas together, and then choose what might work best together, and commit to reviewing the decisions at a later date to see if they are working. If the solutions aren't working, then you can just make adjustments when you review the decisions.

• Avoid reminding and nagging. Nagging and reminding only create power struggles, and it creates a cycle of dependency or rebellion. Instead ask open ended questions, like, "What will happen if you don't finish your homework before 8:30 p.m.? OK, I'm sure you'll figure it out." Or, "What's your plan to do your laundry. OK." When it's time to follow through, simply do so without nagging. For instance, if your child said she would finish cleaning her room before she went to her friend's house, don't remind her when you see the time to leave approaching. When it's time for her to leave, simply let her know that she needs to call her friend to let her know that she will be late, because she has to finish cleaning her room. If arguing ensues, simply respond by calmly saying something like, "Please let me know when you are finished so I can check your work."

• Take a look at places that you find yourself bossing your children and expecting them to respond to your requests. When you see those areas or situations, talk to your child or children about those rough spots and ask for their help in finding a solution and/or routine to help solve the problem. Not only are children (and adults) more willing to cooperate when they have been included in the problem-solving, but they are more willing to do what is expected if they have advanced warning and can plan for what is coming.

When involving children in decision making be sure to avoid the two biggest pitfalls - not stating your needs and not allowing them to state their needs. It is OK to say, "That won't work for me, and here's why." And, it's also OK for them to say, "That won't work for me, and here's why." As long as you have decided to revisit your mutual decision in the near future, it's OK for both adults and children to make mistakes in their decision making. You can always alter or change your decision when you revisit your plan in the near future! In this way, children learn decision making skills and parents learn to trust their children more - and when children feel trusted and involved they feel better, and when they feel better the do better.

Five Words that Changed Everything

This week, a repost from the "Hands Free Mama" who learned to ask, "How would you do it?" when her children became frustrated at home. It's a great read with some insightful advice.

Enjoy!

http://www.handsfreemama.com/2014/12/09/the-manager-in-my-home-the-five-words-that-changed-everything/

This blog spoke to me.  Enjoy, A. Vanderbilt

20 Quotes From Children’s Books Every Adult Should Know

It’s interesting how some of life’s greatest lessons can be found in children’s literature. And chances are that we did not realize this back when we were kids. Sometimes it’s only when we’re older that we learn to fully appreciate and understand the poignant words from our childhood entertainment.

Here are some of the best quotes from books we used to read.

1. A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh

2. Dr Seuss, Horton Hears a Who

3. Aesop, The Lion and the Mouse

4. A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh

5. Roald Dahl, The Twits

6. Dr. Seuss, Oh the Places You’ll Go

7. Shel Silverstein, A Light in the Attic 

8. Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

9. L. Frank Braum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

10. A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh

11. E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web

12. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

13. J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

14. Shel Silverstein

15. Roald Dahl, The Minpins

16. Dr. Seuss, The Lorax

17. P.L. Travers, Mary Poppins 

18. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz 

19. Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

20. A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh