A Montessori preschool class is a place of beauty: 24 preschool-aged children, each engaged in meaningful activity, forming a community of individuals. Look around and you’ll discover faces in deep concentration, or smiling delightedly at a task well done, or conversing warmly with friends. Here a boy reads in a quiet voice to a younger classmate; there, a girl stands respectfully, hands behind her back, observing a lesson the Montessori preschool teacher gives to a slightly older student. In the back of the class, an older boy is showing a friend how to scrub a table, carefully demonstrating the use of the scrubber, the sponge, showing the proper way to pour water from a big pitcher into a bucket.
“Wow”, the visiting mother thinks to herself, as she observes the Montessori preschool environment. And, reflecting on her daily life with her own preschool-aged child: “My child couldn’t possibly do this!”
Are the children you see in a Montessori school special? Do they have super-parents who have somehow helped them mature more quickly than other children? Or can any child attain this level of independence?
Summer time with the children is so much fun. Except when it isn’t.
Every year when school ends and summer camp starts, parents eagerly look forward to more time with their children. Time to go on local excursions, check out the tide pools, the parks, the pool. An opportunity to sign up for a week of soccer camp, or zoo camp, or arts camp (or other summer camp programs.) A chance to take a summer trip to visit relatives overseas, or grandma in the next state.
Yet by mid-July, so many families stream back to our Montessori preschools to sign up, last minute, for Montessori summer camp. Parents are feeling exhausted, and despite big plans for two full months of time together, they guiltily change their plans and sign their children up to go to Montessori summer camp, after all.
Why? Why is it that, just when they get to do all kinds of fun things with their parents, for weeks on end, children go crazy? Is it poor parenting, or something else?
As Montessori educators, we strongly believe it is not poor parenting. In our view, the real reason behind the “summer crazies” is that without the right summer camp environment, children loose their bearings. Young children need the order and stability of their Montessori preschool classrooms. The same reasons why such environments are right for them during the year apply as fully during the summer.
