Blog Archives

Transitioning to Montessori: Independence (Part 1 of 5)

Every fall, children transition to our Montessori programs from other preschools or elementary schools. What can parents do to help with this transition? In this series of blog posts, we lay out a few Montessori principles that apply at the later preschool and early elementary school level. Our focus is on children who transition into Montessori during their kindergarten through 2nd grade years, but many of the ideas suggested here are helpful for preschool children, too.

“Little children, from the moment they are weaned, are making their way toward independence”

“Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.”

— Dr. Maria Montessori

If your child will be transitioning into a Montessori school late into the preschool/kindergarten program, or straight into Montessori elementary school, it is helpful for you as a parent to understand what your child would have experienced had he been in the program in earlier years.

The goal of the Montessori preschool experience is to help children help themselves. “All by myself” is and ought to be the theme of a toddler’s life, and in the right environment, this motivation to be independent becomes the basis of tremendous learning. Montessori preschools, by satisfying the child’s need to be independent, help him acquire skills of daily living in a careful, step-by-step sequence that sets them up for success and earned self-esteem.

It starts with something as simple as enabling toddlers to manage their own snack routine. They start out by learning to lay out a napkin and a small cup. Before long, they are able to set the full table, serve themselves by scooping raisins and pouring water, and clean up the table, put away dishes and sweep up crumbs. Rather than being a passive recipient of snacks, a child learns to satisfy his own needs.

Preschool children in Montessori have the opportunity to do many tasks that other children are not entrusted with until much later. For example, they peel and cut fruits and vegetables, using real knives. They prepare and serve snack to their peers. They cut and arrange flowers and are in charge of taking care of classroom plants and pets.

As these preschoolers become more capable, they relish taking on more responsibility. At school, they take ownership of cleaning up classroom shelves, without being asked, and also teach these same skills and habits to younger friends. At home, they may be entrusted with preparing their own lunches, or being real contributors to family chores.

If a child transitions to Montessori as a 5-, 6- or 7-year-old (i.e., late in preschool or early in elementary school), he may not have had these same experiences. And, maybe more importantly, his parents may not have received coaching on how to foster this type of independence at home.

The best solution, if your child is in this situation, is to start now! Think about what things you may be doing for your child that he could do alone, if you made some slight adjustments to your routines and gave him some extra initial support.

Here are a few ideas to support independence for kindergarten age or early elementary school children (useful whether or not you enroll them in Montessori for elementary school!)

In the kitchen.
1. Provide your child with a low shelf or drawer with his own utensils, so he can set his table. Make this a daily responsibility.
2. Set up healthy food choices on low shelves in the pantry and refrigerator: jars with cereal, a basket of fruit, cut-up veggies in a bowl, a small pitcher with milk or juice. Invite your child to help himself to a healthy snack when he is hungry!
3. Invite your child to help you with food prep. For Small Hands carries a great selection of child-sized implements, from vegetable peelers to cutting boards and aprons. 5- or 6-year-olds can do a lot of food prep, from peeling apples to cutting carrots, from measuring out flour to flipping pancakes!
4. Enable your child to clean up after himself. Set up a child-sized broom & dust bin, a small bucket, a scrubber and a sponge, and ask your child to clean up around the table after eating.
In the bedroom, bathroom and laundry room.
1. Ensure your child’s closet is child-friendly. Make sure he can access all his clothes easily. Limit choices to those appropriate for the season and day-to-day activities (put away special occasion clothes, unless you are ok if your child wears them every day!)
2. Organize things so your child can do his own laundry. Get a two-compartment hamper for easy clothes sorting. Show your child how to manage the washer (including pre-treating stains!) Show him how to fold & put away laundry.

In his Montessori elementary classroom, your child will have an increasing amount of responsibility. He’ll have the opportunity to keep his own work organized, take care of classroom plants and pets, and help keep the general classroom organized. He’ll learn how to be in charge of his own academic activities, planning out his daily and weekly tasks, and taking the initiative to reach out to teachers and friends for help when he needs it.

Giving your child more independence at home will help get him ready for this new environment of freedom within limits (more on that in the next blog post here.)

Read more in our Transitioning to Montessori blog series:

Summer Travel: Should you “app” it? – Part 2

There is an ongoing debate on how much technology-based engagement is appropriate for very young children. (The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no screen time prior to age 2, for example.) Whatever the answer, the extra time with our children we have during summer travels is an opportunity to be cherished. A healthy dose of skepticism towards technology-based entertainment is, we believe, appropriate.

That said, something that is undesirable in excess is not necessarily undesirable in moderation. There may be times when an electronic device is a useful and perfectly appropriate way to entertain your child (think 10 hour international airplane flights!) Many of us adults rightly love our iPhones, Androids, Kindles etc.: technology, used correctly, can be a great tool.

So what’s the best way to use portable electronics with children? What guidance can we as Montessori educators provide for parents who want children to use these gadgets the right way?

Use gadgets purposefully and responsibly.

Beware of obsessive use. While it’s ok for a child to occasionally enjoy screen time, make sure that your child doesn’t become obsessed with your iPhone. One warning sign: if the child regularly prefers time with the gadget, over real-world experiences with you, you likely need to cut back on screen time.

Use technology as an enabler. There are great tools out there, from wonderful videos that explain the world (the show “How It’s Made” is one of our favorites!), to great tools (dictionary.com or a similar application should be on all parent’s smartphones!) Plus, not all content on the device has to be games or video: fill your device with chapter books that are great to read aloud, audio books, and music.

Don’t overestimate educational value. Games can be fun for children, and keep them busy. Just don’t overestimate how much learning goes on between a preschooler and a gadget: focus on the fun, and take any educational value as a bonus. That way, you won’t be tempted to give too much screen time, because it’s so educational!

Select the apps you use carefully, with eyes wide open.

Technology has wonderful potential: It can provide a built-in control of error, enabling children to independently learn from their mistakes. It can combine audio and visual inputs, helping children, for example, to identify letter sounds, or to spell from dictation. It can individualize, for example by repeating letters or spelling areas that children struggle with.

Unfortunately, many educational apps and games are made by programmers, not educators. As a result, many apps have questionable pedagogical approaches. You as a parent need to be aware of these shortfalls. Be on the lookout for a few common errors, and you’ll be able to more easily weed through the huge number of apps out there to select the better ones for your Montessori child.

Beware of sticker shock. No, not in the sense of prices, but in the sense of sticker-like artificial phrase. Mindless cheers (“You’re awesome!” after every move!) or smiley faces are not a good source of motivation. Research repeatedly shows that internally motivated learning is much better than activity motivated by rewards. Good apps are inherently motivating, as the player progresses through levels and completes challenges. They should not require, on top of the challenge, constant clapping, cheering and stickers. Unfortunately, while many games aimed at adults recognize this, most apps for children fall into the fake-praise trap.
Avoid the clutter. Think Montessori classroom: simple, zen-like games that focus attention on the learning objective are much better than those that are full of clutter. Why do numbers have to swim in an aquarium, anyway?
Don’t go for boring stuff. Many apps are nothing by glorified flash cards. Flash cards don’t work in real life. Why would they work on a gadget? (No big danger here, though: your child will just not be interested, and the only damage will be to your pocket book!)
Beware of any “learn to read” app. Most are full of pedagogical errors and potential conflicts with your child’s Montessori experience. Here are just a few of the most common problems, which afflict almost every single reading app I have tried:

Using letter names. In Montessori, we teach letter sounds, not names, because only letter sounds matter in learning to read. What does this mean: “kayayetee”? Can’t figure it out? It’s “CAT”, spelled using letter names. You can’t read that? Neither can your child! Yet most apps that teach letters use letter names. You’ll see a yak, a cow and wasp appear on the screen, and the child is ask to touch the animal that starts with “why” or with “double you.”
Mispronouncing letter sounds and applying phonics wrong. Many applications that do try to teach phonics mispronounce sounds, saying “kuh” for the letter “k”, instead of just using the initial consonant sound. Other apps introduce phonograms incorrectly: for instance, they might show the word “pool”, and spell it out with the short letter sounds p, o, o, l, then say “pool”, without ever introducing the idea that “oo” has its own sound. Confusing, not helpful!
Using print, not cursive. Almost all apps use print letters, and often capital print letters. That’s not horrible if they are aimed at reading, but less helpful if they are focused on writing activities, such as tracing letters to learn their shape.
Focusing on “sight words”, rather than decoding. Many apps follow the public school approach of teaching children to look at words as a whole to guess their meaning from their total shape, rather than sounding words out to make meaning. Memorizing decodable words or guessing at words is not a good habit for young readers to get into.

So with all of these caveats, are there any apps that a thoughtful Montessori parent can use? I’m no expert on the app world, and as with anything parents buy for their kids, there is an element of personal preference. But after reviewing dozens of apps for my 3- and 5-year-old children, here are some that are better than the rest (although many still suffer from some of the issues outlined above):

Kids Finger Painter. This is a free-form painting app, and about as creative as you can get with a gadget. Kids select different colors and brush width, then create art work on the screen. They can even save the artwork when done!
My First Tangrams. This is a simple geometry app, best played on a larger screen, which simulates physical tangrams, where children arrange simple geometric shapes to make more complex figures.
Bugs and Buttons. This is an app with an adult game feel (high quality animations, nice background music), with several games that teach different skills (sorting things, making patterns, counting, fine motor control.) Very well made and not at all annoying!
Montessorium apps. Created by Montessori parents, these apps try to bring Montessori sandpaper letters, number rods and puzzle maps to the iPad/iPhone space. Quite well done, these apps are simple, use phonics, no cheering, and include materials familiar to your Montessori child.
SoundSeeker. This app is basically a sound game “I spy”, where children drag pictures to the letter that stands for their beginning sound. It uses letter sounds, but unfortunately has a heavy dose of cheering and sticker charts.
Montessori Crosswords. Nice app that simulates word building with the moveable alphabet. Offers a cursive option, works with letter sounds and correct phonograms. Has lots of options that go well with Montessori: for example, you can focus on specific sounds or phonograms to have your child practice.
PhotoTouch SightWords. This app simulates the 2nd period of a three-period puzzle word lesson. The child hears a word, sees between 3-10 different words on the screen, and has to touch the correct word. You can customize the difficulty from preschool – 3rd grade level, and even create your own items and lists (helpful for practicing phonograms, for example.)
CardDroid Math. This is a simple math facts practice app for Android devices. Nothing fancy, just math problems that children can do and self-check their work. Fully customizable problem sets: start with simple addition up to 10, and end with double-digit multiplication. You can even set a time limit, and challenge the (older) child try to improve against himself in math facts speed.
MontessoriTech apps. I haven’t had the chance to try these apps yet (they require an iPad, and I don’t own one), but from the description and screen shots, these sound like great apps for older primary and younger elementary students. They include the Stamp Game, compound words, and math facts with Montessori beads.

Have you found any apps that meet the criteria we discuss here? We’d love to hear about them in the comments, or just post them on our Facebook page, in response to the link to this blog post there.

Heike Larson

Summer Travel: Should you “app” it? – Part 1

Summer time, for many of us, means travel time! From day trips to the local beach, to weekends at Grandma’s house, to long vacations in different parts of the world, summer is an opportunity to get out there and explore.

But travel time also means being stuck in a car, train or airplane for hours on end. For families with preschool-age children, it’s hard to know what to do to pass the time in these situations.

Out come the iPad, Kindle, Android phone or another hand-held electronic device: what easier way to keep your child occupied? And if you just invest in the right educational software, so your preschooler can learn her letters while you can focus on driving or enjoy a summer book for yourself, then doing so is totally guilt-free. Right?

Well, maybe.

There’s no question that electronic devices work very well in keeping preschool children occupied: videos and games do hold their attention. They do buy you quiet as you wait for a plane, or drive a car on longer trips. But are they really providing value? Are they the best use of the precious vacation time you get to spend with your preschool child—and are they optimizing your child’s vacation experience?

As Montessorians, we believe that its critical for a preschooler to view the world “out there”, the real world of people and places and objects, as a wondrous opportunity for discovery. This attitude is achieved through engagement with a caring adult who illuminates all the things to be encountered and explored. So while we as parents may occasionally call upon select apps for help (more on good and bad choices in this blog post), our view is that we should also prioritize the value of finding ways to share experiences that are unique to the trip, or that we’re otherwise unlikely to share with our children.

By thinking ahead, we can plan for many fun (and educational) experiences, most of which don’t require us to add time to our travel. Here are just a few ideas as you prepare your preschooler’s “travel environment”:

Give a lesson on simplified map reading. Many Montessori preschool children have worked with maps in the classroom. While they can’t read normal maps, you can easily sketch a map on a piece of paper. Draw in a few highlights: a tunnel, a refinery along the way, a big farm, some mountains, an airport, a planned lunch stop. Ask your child to find these places for you as you drive. Label highways, and you can practice numbers.
Explore the world you travel through. Identify some unique features you’ll encounter, whether outside the train window or in your car. Provide your child with the language: “See that lake over there?”, “look, there’s an oil derrick”, “see this farm? They are growing oranges!” Especially on car trips, there is much to see. On one recent trip, we noticed lots of trucks loaded with tomatoes, and had an impromptu discussion about farming, the many things tomatoes are used for, and transportation.
People watch together. Airports are great for this: watch the people with your child. Discuss where they might be going, and why we think that. Notice people in different moods, and discuss their feelings: this child is really upset, this couple is in their arms and happy to see each other again, and so on.
Read together. For airplanes, bring books instead of video games. Scour the library for topics that might be related to your trip – Hello Ocean makes a great introduction to the beach, for example; About Mountains is a great springboard for discussing on a trip to go hiking. Click here for a suggested summer time reading list with ideas for common summer destinations.
Play anywhere games. Some can be educational: ask your child to count white cars, or to add together three raisings plus five raisins before you give them to her as a snack. For ideas on games for any situation, try Fun on the Run, a pocket-sized little book full of easy ideas that require just you, your preschooler and maybe a few things like crayons that you probably have in your purse anyway.
Sing songs together. Music Together, a company that organizes very popular preschool music programs, sells two CDs of wonderful sing-aloud songs, called Family Favorites. The best thing? These songs are actually fun to listen to for the adults, too! Or make up your own songs as you go along, to any familiar tune.
Read and memorize poems. For slightly older children, a long car ride can be a good opportunity to memorize some poems. Jack Prelutsky has a fun collection of silly rhymes. Ride a Purple Pelican is one of our favorites: it’s a great travel book, as many of the poems relate to places in the US and Canada. The Random House Book of Poetry for Children is a great collection of children’s poems from many authors, a number of which are short enough to commit to memory.
Bring simple arts & crafts supplies. Your Montessori child may delight in fun activities like tracing & coloring simple animal shapes (this book is a fun source of ideas), making art with stencils (my 5-year-old loves Mandalas), threading beads (just bring a little tray to keep them together in the plane), or cutting up and gluing together colorful paper mosaics. For Small Hands, a Montessori-oriented online store, has many read-made crafts supplies, a number of which can easily be done at an airport or in a plane.

So back to the initial question: should you bring your iPad or other device? Our answer is yes, go right ahead. Just make sure to use it sparingly, so that it doesn’t take over the precious hours you can spend engaged with your child. This is your chance to make memories together—it’s worth the extra effort!

(If you do want to use an electronic device, read on here for our thoughts on how to go about selecting games for your child. And don’t forget that chapter books work well on electronic devices, as do audio books!)

Heike Larson

The Montessori Preschool Difference, In A Nutshell

“What is Montessori? How does it differ from other preschool approaches, such as day care centers or play-based and developmental preschools?”

I often get this question from parents I meet, both at LePort events and when I am with my two Montessori preschool-aged children at local playgrounds. I love this question, and it usually leads me to start talking about the many differences and wondrous benefits of Montessori preschool.

Unfortunately, not everybody has the time for an hour-long explanation. So to make sure I could answer quickly, I distilled my answers to the 3+3 of Montessori preschool, the three obvious differences in how a preschool classroom is run, and the three top benefits a Montessori education offers to children.

Since the parents I shared this with found it illuminating, I thought I’d post it online, so other parents looking into preschool options can benefit from it too.

THREE MONTESSORI PRESCHOOL DIFFERENCES: HOW WE TEACH

Multi-age, family like communities.
Most play-based programs segregate children by age into the 3’s, 4’s, Pre-K and so on. Montessori preschools instead group 3- to 6-year-olds into one class. A child stays with the same teacher for three years. This builds a strong, family-like community, with lasting relationships between child and teacher, and friendships between children of different ages. Young children look up to and learn from older ones; while the 5- and 6-year-olds gain confidence as they become classroom leaders and mentors for their younger peers.

Uninterrupted 3-hour “work periods.”
Most preschools follow tight, adult-led schedules, with a new group activity every 30-45 minutes. In contrast, authentic Montessori preschools offer long, uninterrupted work periods that allow children to fully engage in tasks that they have chosen for themselves, under the careful, individual guidance of their teacher. Montessori children thus have repeated opportunities to get really engrossed in their activities, and experience regular states of concentrated focus. Visit a good Montessori preschool, and you may see a 3-year-old spending 30 minutes carefully arranging color tablets in a rainbow pattern, or a 4-year-old tracing, coloring and labeling a map of the world. As adults, we can’t focus when we know we’ll be interrupted soon; neither can children. Unstructured, child-led time is key in building concentration skills at the foundation of all learning!

A carefully sequenced, activity-based curriculum that engages hand and mind.
While most play-based preschools have the same type of toys you already have at home—think legos, dress-up corners, coloring pages, trains and blocks—Montessori preschools offer something different to your child. Displayed beautifully on low shelves, you’ll find dozens of scientifically designed learning materials: a Pink Tower, Color Tablets, pouring activities, a Movable Alphabet, math materials that teach the decimal system and arithmetic into the thousands, and so much more. Each activity has been selected because children at hundreds of Montessori preschools chose it freely, repeatedly. Each one teaches multiple skills and enables the preschool child to problem solve, to use his hands and all his senses, to repeat an activity and achieve mastery.
By progressing at his own pace through these activities, a Montessori preschool child joyfully refines his gross
and fine motor skills, and, ultimately, progresses to reading, writing and arithmetic into the thousands, all
while in preschool.

THREE MONTESSORI PRESCHOOL DIFFERENCES: WHAT CHILDREN LEARN

Independence, self-confidence and a growth mindset.
Montessori children acquire a level of physical and intellectual independence rarely seen in other preschool environments. From day one they learn to take care of their own needs (dressing themselves, preparing snack) and their environment (cleaning up after lunch, taking care of classroom plants and animals.) This daily experience of being trusted with real responsibility for meaningful tasks—and rising to the occasion by successfully meeting that responsibility—results in children who have the earned self confidence that comes from actual mastery (against shaky self-esteem based on empty praise by others.) And because we acknowledge that mistakes are necessary for learning, because we greet spilled water or a broken glass with a calm, constructive attitude, children discover that it’s ok to make mistakes, and that we can and should learn from them. Our preschoolers acquire a growth mindset, a fundament attitude about the world that is invaluable
to a joyful, successful life.

Joyful acquisition of reading, writing and arithmetic in preschool.While many preschools pride themselves in their “pre-reading” or “pre-math” curriculum, Montessori preschool children actually learn to write, read and do arithmetic into the thousands, while in preschool. They do so joyfully, with activities they choose, such as drawing pictures and writing stories about them, or participating in a small group addition exercise with the Golden Bead materials. The work Montessori 6-year-olds do is astounding: look at our work samples, or click here to see the type of book a typical 3rd year Montessori preschool student can read independently.

Executive function skills, from attention span to graceful social interactions.
Recent research shows that executive function skills (self control, organization, time management) are more highly correlated with school and life success than even IQ. Montessori preschool purposefully develops these skills. When a child has to wait for a material another child is working with, or when he stands calmly to observe a friend at work, he practices impulse control. By executing multi-step processes, such as table washing, and by always completing a full cycle of work—from taking a material from a shelf, to doing the activity and replacing it in its proper spot—the preschooler learns organization and problem solving. Grace and courtesy lessons and a daily emphasis on respecting the rights of friends and teachers foster a benevolent environment where pro-social skills emerge naturally.

Balance Bikes and Montessori

It never ceases to amaze us how joyfully Montessori preschool children learn advanced skills, and at such early ages. In our preschool classes, we often see 4-year-olds writing in cursive, 5-year-olds reading chapter books, and 6-year-old doing arithmetic into the thousands.

We know the reason: a prepared environment. When a preschool child is able to explore and experience materials designed to meet his particular capacities, he learns naturally and easily.

There’s no reason these same Montessori principles cannot be extended to the home environment. As parents, we can be on the lookout for materials that help our preschool-aged children learn other skills just as joyfully and early as they do in their preschool classroom.

A great example is bike riding. When my daughter was 3 ½ years old, she was able to ride a bike without training wheels. This is not because she has innately superior motor skills, but because she had the right materials. Instead of relying on training wheels to have her first biking experience, she learned with a balance bike (also called a running bike or striding bike, or pedal-less bike.)

A balance bike is a very small frame bicycle without pedals and without training wheels. A child as young as age two can sit on the saddle, and push off with his feet to move forward. Initially, children may just walk slowly, standing over the saddle, but as they gain confidence, they sit down, pushing faster and faster. Ultimately, they gain enough speed to lift up their feet and coast along, balancing on the bike. They breeze down hills, leaning into curves. They use the handbrake to slow themselves down, and put their feet up on foot pegs whizzing down hills. They learn all the skills for riding a bike (other than pedaling), effortlessly and playfully.

Balance bikes make learning to ride a bike effortless and fun, the same way Montessori preschool does for other skills:

Isolating the challenge. In Montessori preschool, we separate out component skills and teach them separately, in a way that makes learning each skill motivating. For example, the Metal Insets allow preschoolers to practice pencil control with an activity the child enjoys. Similarly, the balance bike isolates the challenge of learning to balance a bike, and makes it easy to master, in a step-by-step progression.

Establishing correct habits, from the get-go. Undoing bad habits is hard work, unnecessary hard work. That’s why Montessori preschoolers learn key skills correctly from the beginning, whether it is holding a pitcher correctly when pouring, completing a work cycle by returning the activity to the proper place on the shelf, or learning to write in cursive in preschool. Learning to bike with training wheels teaches bad habits: children learn to expect the bike to stay upright when not moving, as the training wheels allow the bike to do that. But real bikes actually require movement to stay upright! So when you take the training wheels away from a 5-year-old, he has to unlearn the bad habit of stopping with his feet on the pedals. That’s in part why it is often a struggle to get children to give up their training wheels!

Making learning fun: the “follow the child” approach. We all learn best when the learning process itself is fun. We like to try things independently, figure them out by ourselves, without constant corrections by well-meaning teachers. That’s why, in Montessori preschool, materials are designed so that they draw the children in, with a “control of error” built into the materials. The same is true with a balance bike: riding these little bikes is lots of fun for the children, and they can slowly, on their own, progress from just walking with the bike, to running with it, to ultimately lifting up their feet for longer and longer periods. No adult coaching or intervention is needed: the child is in charge, and he basically teaches himself the skill of balancing, in a fun, effortless, self-correcting way.

Learning skills during sensitive periods. In Montessori, we believe that children have specific sensitive periods, during which learning happens naturally and effortlessly. For instance, we see every day that learning beautiful handwriting is much easier done at ages 4-5, then in 3rd grade. The same is true for learning to ride a bike: with a balance bike, learning to balance on a bike is as natural for a 3-year-old as learning to walk; as many parents witness, learning to ride a bike later on can be much more of a struggle!

This summer, when you think about fun activities with your preschool aged child (for the time she’s not at Montessori summer camp!), consider buying her a balance bike. Take her to the park, and let her go. Watch, and see her skills develop: it’s great fun for the children, and so wonderful as a mother or father to see them proudly and confidently applying their growing skills in the park and on family bike rides!

(There’s a great video here of a 4 ½ year old boy learning to ride a balance bike, showing him progressing over 2 ½ weeks from walking to really riding!)

Will my child thrive in Montessori preschool?

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?

Dr. Montessori believed that children need a certain type of environment to thrive, one that enables them to be self-sufficient. Children need to be offered specific types of activity that engage hand and mind and lend themselves to be perfected by repeated practice. Writes Dr. Montessori: “The essential thing is for the task to arouse such an interest that it engages the child’s whole personality.”

Decades of practice in Montessori preschools around the world clearly demonstrate that preschool children can do much more than we normally give them credit for. They can act mature beyond their age, focusing intently on a task for long stretches, helping each other kindly, following their teacher’s guidance eagerly, and displaying a wonderful benevolence toward each other. They can enjoy the profound pleasure and self-esteem of work well done.

As Montessori educators, we are convinced that the prepared environment is the key piece of the developmental puzzle. Children need a carefully –designed learning environment for their cognitive and personal growth as much as they need nutritious, regular meals for their physical growth. As Dr. Montessori put it:

Children need to work at an interesting occupation: they should not be helped unnecessarily, nor interrupted, once they have begun to do something intelligent. Sweetness, severity, medicine do not help if the child is mentally hungry. If a man is starving for lack of food, we do not call him a fool, nor give him a beating, nor do we appeal to his better feelings. He needs a meal, and nothing else will do. The same thing applies here. Neither kindness nor severity will solve the problem. Man is an intelligent being, and needs mental food almost more than physical food.

All of this probably sounds rather abstract, and you may not be not sure if it would actually be a good fit for your child. So what should you do? Should you take a leap of faith and just enroll your child in a Montessori preschool?

Choosing a preschool is a big decision. If you find the Montessori philosophy compelling, but aren’t fully convinced, use this summer as an opportunity to learn more. Let your child try out Montessori by enrolling him in preschool summer camp.

Montessori preschool summer camp is a great way to test the waters. It allows your child to attend a toddler or preschool Montessori program for a few weeks. And at a good Montessori school, it ensures that your child’s first taste of preschool is positive:

Expert preschool teachers. In an established Montessori summer program, experienced Montessori preschool teachers lead camp classes. They understand children, and have much more training than a typical summer camp counselor.
A real Montessori preschool community. Many of the children attending Montessori summer camp are students who also attend during the school year program. This means that summer camp classes have a great mix of ages and backgrounds. Seasoned Montessori preschool peers delight in helping new summer camp students get settled into class!
A normal Montessori preschool day. Summer camp is Montessori preschool: summer camp children have the opportunity to freely explore the Montessori materials, with extended work periods in the morning and afternoon. By enrolling her in summer camp for several weeks, you enable your toddler or preschool child to adjust to the Montessori preschool routine, and you may be surprised how much she can develop in a month or two!
Added summer camp activities. To make summer special for children, we apply Montessori preschool principles to typical camp activities. Bi-weekly themed projects enable students to explore the world with all their senses, as they discover the wonders of rainforests, learn about the desert environment and relate to these themes with arts and crafts activities especially developed for summer camp. “Montessori in Motion”, LePort’s unique summer program, offers bi-weekly sports activities: camp students learn the vocabulary and key skills for kickball and soccer, baseball and square dancing. It’s like attending a summer sports camp without having to leave!
Summer camp water play, in-house field trips and pizza Fridays. A visit from reptilian friends, a bubble show, a full aquarium of marine creatures coming to class: summer camp in-house field trips add safe, educational fun. Splash Fridays: children + water—need we say more?!

If you decide you like Montessori summer camp, and want to stay for the school year program, your child will have a leg up. He’ll return to a familiar Montessori preschool environment. If he isn’t fully toilet trained yet, a summer camp experience in the Montessori toddler room may just be what he needs to become fully toilet independent and ready for the Montessori preschool class.

And, importantly, summer camp enables you to see your child at school, to observe how he adjusts, and to get a feel for the Montessori preschool community your family may later join full time.

What do you have to lose? Just give it a try: you can download the summer camp applications and a detailed summer camp calendar right here!

Heike Larson

*Please note that summer camp enrollment does not guarantee immediate enrollment for the fall school year program. Many LePort preschool campuses have waitlists for fall enrollment. If you are considering enrolling your child for preschool, please inquire with the campus you are interested in about future program availability.

Summer Crazies or Summer Camp Fun?

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.

Children benefit greatly from short, limited vacations or extra-curricular programs, as well as from quality time spent with family and friends. But too much a good thing is not necessarily a good thing. Those that don’t attend Montessori summer camp for too long regress in their behavior, losing (temporarily) the developmental gains they made in preschool.

Dr. Montessori pointed out that negative behaviors observed in many young children—possessiveness, clumsy movement and breaking of things, unkindness, whining, shouting, screaming and general noisiness, clinginess and boredom—disappeared once the child became engaged in concentrated work in the Montessori classroom. Writes Dr. Montessori:

One of the chief reasons for the spread of our schools has been the visible disappearance of these defects in children as soon as they found themselves in a place where active experience upon their surroundings was permitted, and where free exercise of their powers could nourish their minds. Surrounded by interesting things to do, they could repeat the exercises at will, and went from one spell of concentration to another. Once the children had reached this stage, and could work and focus their minds on something of real interest to them, their defects disappeared. … All these disturbances came from a single cause, which was insufficient nourishment for the life of the mind.

Children need routines. They need an environment designed for them, where they can function independently, with little adult help. Their developing minds must find interesting things to engage with, and a controlled, well-designed space that allows them to engage without distractions, corrections or time pressures to move on to the next activity.

Summer can be exciting—but it can also be too exciting some times, and too chaotic. Too many trips, excursions and adult-led summer camp experiences (especially when swim camp follows drama camp follows cooking camp!) mean children can feel out-of-control and out-of-sorts. All these summer camp activities leave little room for quiet time. Even when quiet time finally arrives, outside a Montessori summer camp environment, children don’t have access to the carefully designed Montessori materials that allow them to focus their whole attention, and to attain the concentration their minds need to develop optimally.

In LePort’s Montessori preschool summer camp, we ensure that children continue in their familiar, safe environment. We do of course add fun elements to make summer camp special and different from the school year: bi-weekly summer camp arts & crafts themes and sports activities; in-house summer camp field trips; splash days and pizza parties. But the key thing is that all these activities are integrated into a Montessori preschool environment, and led by experiences Montessori teachers, not temporary camp counselors, so that a child experiences the new and exciting within a familiar, reliable framework.

We actively encourage you to take some quality time off with your child, and to help him or her explore the exciting world out there. But at the same time, consider whether eleven weeks of summer is a long time, especially if your child is only three or four. Your child benefits greatly from being in her preschool classroom, and the calming intellectual life she lives there helps her to be happy and centered.

So what advice can we give to parents who worry about their children going crazy in summer? We’ll let Dr. Montessori speak for us:

Children need to work at an interesting occupation: they should not be helped unnecessarily, nor interrupted, once they have begun to do something intelligent. Sweetness, severity, medicine do not help if the child is mentally hungry. If a man is starving for lack of food, we do not call him a fool, nor give him a beating, nor do we appeal to his better feelings. He needs a meal, and nothing else will do. The same thing applies here. Neither kindness nor severity will solve the problem. Man is an intelligent being, and needs mental food almost more than physical food.

Montessori summer camp is the “mental food” a child needs to thrive in the summer. Spice it up with some trips, excursions and a week or two of another summer camp experience, and voila, the cure for the summer crazies!

Heike Larson

A Sense of History at LePort

Amid the safety and comfort of Orange County, it is hard for us to imagine that living in America once meant risking your life for an uncertain future. Yet this was exactly the challenge early British settlers faced in the untamed New World. Thousands of miles from family, friends, and king, settlers in Jamestown, Virginia, and in the colony at Massachusetts Bay, literally struggled for basic necessities while working to build a future for themselves and their descendants.

This school year, the students in LePort’s 7th-grade history class are studying early America, and last month they completed an assignment allowing them to vicariously experience the life of an early colonist. Writing as a fictional settler in one of the first American colonies, the 7th graders’ mission was to compose a letter to a friend or relative back in England and attempt to convince him or her to travel across the ocean to join the new colony. Within the bounds of what they learned from lectures, assignments and discussions, along with independent historical research, students were left free to determine the details of their letter – of their settler’s life, values, and voice. They completed their research, planning, and initial writing in history class, and received additional feedback on further drafts from their language arts teacher, Mrs. Longley. The results were impressive.

Below is one example student letter. Sidney Bowen – or Sir Terrance Francis Williams XVI – chose to write from the perspective of a settler who came to seek gold in Virginia, and found himself quite unprepared for the rugged life he now leads. In inviting his friend across the Atlantic to join him in America, “Sir Terrance” tries to put a good spin on the challenges he has faced, but does not quite succeed. I hope you enjoy reading Sidney’s letter as much as I did!

January 12th, 1622

Dear Sir Arnold Louis Bennet,

How are you, my old friend? How is your insuperable daughter, Mary? (I am only joking…) I am now living in the “New World” in Jamestown, Virginia. It is quite a lovely place, indeed! The reason I am suddenly speaking to you on such matters is because I wish for you to join the settlers and come to the new land. I know you were a wealthy man, just as I was, and I have heard that you are beginning to lose your fortune, as I had sixteen years ago in 1606. I was running low on gold, but I did not want to work, and why should I? Should a handsome, dashing gentleman be forced to plant crops and pick up foul cow manure? I think not! But before I went to weep in a corner, I heard that the London Company was going to send three ships out to Chesapeake Bay to search for gold. GOLD! In an instant I decided to invest in the London Company and board one of the ships to become a gold hunter, in order to gain back my fortune and possibly receive more. In late August of 1607, we all arrived in Jamestown, named after King James. We faced a few conflicts with illness, as any colony did, because of the lack of food and the swampy atmosphere. But a man named John Smith, whom I happened to abhor, saved some of the other gentleman settlers who were having a miniscule bit of trouble with local natives. The colonists and I were at the time living near the Algonquin Indians, whom John Smith befriended. This friendship allowed us to trade food and crops with the Indians.

After we settled briefly, all of the gentleman settlers, including me, went out to search for gold. After a few days of unenthusiastic rummaging, we all spotted yellow dirt deep in the ground! We brutally and viciously dug, and dug, and dug until we found immense pounds of gold! It was a precious sight…until we sent it back to England. We realized that our riches were not truly riches, but pyrite (fool’s gold). John Smith believed that we spent too much time searching for worthless gold. (But anyone could’ve mistaken it for gold, Smith!) Then—the nerve of the man!—he created a ludicrous law that we needed to plant our own crops or we would not receive food. “He that will not work shall not eat”, he snorted insolently.

In 1609, John Smith fortunately left our colony and went back to England, but then we had a little glitch in our lifestyle. People now call it the “Starving Time”, but that saying is quite exaggerated. We merely had a lower amount of food in our supply, which made us lightly gnaw on wild animals, and dead bodies…but it wasn’t as horrid as you might think. It could’ve happened to any colony without the proper tools for building homes. Luckily, England heard of our inconsequential troubles, and they instantaneously sent over supplies. We were saved…I mean, helped. In 1611, the London Company sent Sir Thomas Dale over to Jamestown to become governor of our little colony. He gave each person a three-acre amount of land, but we were forced to work in order to keep it. Soon after, we discovered that the Indians had found a plant, which they would smoke out of a clay pipe. The plant was named tobacco. After this incredible plant was discovered, everyone was planting tobacco in their land to sell to English merchants at exorbitant prices. And believe me, this plant that is formed into smoke is the most addicting material I have ever tasted.

1619 was one of the most exciting times in Jamestown because a ship of women arrived to enlarge the colony’s population. According to the colony’s laws, I am obligated to work most of the time in order to keep my land, which is a contemptible rule. The arrival of these women was principally exciting for me because I wouldn’t have to work nearly as much with a wife. My dear and charming wife, Jane, is not only beautiful, but labors day and night like a mule for her loving husband. Also, I do not have to pay my mule…I mean wife. Jane helps me through the horrendous pain by making our own clothes, planting crops for food, making soap, candles, and more! My favorite chore to watch is the process of candle making. There is a large iron kettle held on a crane over the fire, and when the fat and grease melt, she dips the cotton in the fat and allows it to dry.

From what I have explained about the colonies, you may not be entirely convinced to join me, considering all I have spoken about is work. If and when you arrive in Virginia, you will recognize that life is not only work, but there are families living in the colony, whose young children are receiving a glorious amount of education. I, for one, despise children, so I do not have any because they whine and cry, run around in dirt, and more things that I don’t wish to share with you. Since you always wanted to raise a family, you might consider having a child here. Although, I’m sure introspection will bring you to a firm decision to NOT have children, since they damage your life greatly.

Well, my dear friend, I have had a longing desire to see you again, for it has been sixteen years, and that is too long, Arnold. I anticipate that you find my letter influential enough that you will perhaps consider joining the colony. It is unlike anything I have experienced my entire life, and I believe you will concur with me. I hope to see you in the new land, Arnie!

Sincerely,
Sir Terrance Francis Williams XVI

One of our goals in the LePort history program is that students do not just study history, but are immersed in it — that the past is understood not as a series of names, dates, and events to be memorized, but as flesh and blood. Taking on the role of a historical character is one of the most rewarding ways to immerse oneself in history, but also one of the most demanding, because making such writing realistic and compelling requires a student to integrate a wealth of information. For assignments like the settler letter, students need to know more than the 5 Ws of history (the who, what, where, when, and why); they must have a full-blown sense of the past — of the goals, manners, and values of historical cultures and people. Sidney clearly achieved that in her letter, as did her peers in theirs, and the result is a meaningful understanding of early America that will not be forgotten.

Matt Ballin, History Teacher

Observing carefully and speaking clearly

When parents visit a well-run Montessori preschool classroom, they often are amazed to see the preschool teachers engaged in two activities not common in other preschools settings:

Observation. A Montessori teacher regularly steps back from interacting with the children to observe. Dr. Montessori likened the teacher’s role to that of a scientist, one who identifies salient facts about each child, strives to understand where that child is in his development, and then, on that observational basis, tailors her lessons to the child’s abilities and interests.

One-on-one lessons. While most preschools are primarily group environments, Montessori teachers in the preschool years deliver most of their lessons one-on-one. They tailor what they teach to each child, and to each particular moment in time, observing and responding to the child’s interest at that instant to make learning enjoyable and meaningful.

Recent research suggests that these two factors—observing the child and then providing language in response to the child’s interests in the moment, rather than just blanketing the child with verbal input—is the differentiating factor between children who speak early and well and children who lag in their verbal development.

While prior research had pinpointed the importance of the volume of verbal exposure by contrasting children from language-impoverished families to those of professional parents, Dr. Catherine Tamis-LeMonda of New York University aimed to understand why children of affluent, well-educated parents differed widely in their rate of language development.

In Dr. Tamis-LeMonda’s study, researchers analyzed how well-to-do New York parents interacted with their babies as they played with common toys and interacted over meals, then followed up over the next year, to track children’s language development.

Even in this homogeneous group of educated, well-off parents, all of whom provided a rich verbal environment to their children, language abilities diverged significantly by the end of the observation period.

Here’s how the results of the study are summarized in the book NurtureShock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman:

The variable that best explained these gaps was how often a mom rapidly responded to her child’s vocalizations and explorations. The toddlers of high-responders were a whopping six months ahead of toddlers of low-responders.

Remember, the families in this sample were all well-off, so all children were exposed to robust parent vocabularies. All the infants heard lots of language. How often a mother initiated conversation with her child was not predictive of the language outcomes—what matters was, if the infant initiated, whether the mom responded…

“I couldn’t believe there was that much of a shift in developmental timing,” Tamis-LeMonda recalled. “The shifts were hugely dramatic.” She points to two probable mechanisms to explain it. First, through this call-and-response pattern, the baby’s brain learns that sounds coming out of his month affect his parents and get their attention—that voicing is important, not meaningless. Second, a child needs to associate an object with a word, so the word has to be heard just as an infant is looking at or grabbing it…

This variable, how a parent responds to a child’s vocalizations—right in the moment—seems to be the most powerful mechanism in puling a child from babble to fluent speech.

Other studies have verified this mechanism: careful observation of young children, followed by verbal interactions that build upon the child’s interests, are the most effective way to stimulate language development.

This is exactly what we do in our Montessori classrooms.

In a Montessori classroom, teachers observe first, then provide lessons which tie language to specific objects or actions the child finds engaging.

Take the Pink Tower. In this activity, a teacher will present to the child a series of ten pink, graded cubes, which the child builds into a tower. It’s an activity that our three-year-olds delight in. It allows them to move about the room; to learn to walk gracefully as they carry the individual blocks; to practice fine motor skills as they carefully balance the blocks to build the tower.

The Pink Tower is a motor-skill activity, usually associated with the development of gross motor skills. But what’s interesting here, when we are concerned with verbal skills, is the way this activity is also an opportunity for language development!

Here’s how: the teacher may observe a child building the tower. When he is done, she may quietly sit down next to him, and give a lesson on vocabulary related to classifying and comparing things by size. As she points to the tiny one centimeter cube the child has just proudly placed at the top of the tower, she says: “This is the smallest.” Pointing to the biggest one at the bottom, she says: “This is the largest.” Pointing to the block one up from the bottoms: “This one is smaller”, and so on. The child may take apart the tower, and the lesson may continue: “Can you put the smallest one over here?” and “Bring the largest one back to the stand first.” The teacher may complete the cycle by pointing to the tiny cube and ask: “Which one is this?”, to which the child excitedly responds, “It’s the smallest one!” The child thus learns important vocabulary in a moment when his own interests have primed him for such learning.

This lesson is a perfect example of a teacher observing a child, and offering language that is tied to that individual child’s activity and interest, in the precise moment when the child is fully attentive.

Contrast this with how language may be taught in a traditional preschool or school setting, where a teacher may collect a group of children to learn about vocabulary related to size. She may use similar graded blocks, and use similar words. She may be engaging, and the children may repeat after her in a chorus. No one would deny that language instruction is happening here. But notice that the learning is adult-initiated and adult-led, and the child’s ability to absorb language is not optimized. Group-based instruction of this type misses the key ingredient of responsiveness, which the research shows is essential in optimally fostering language development.

Parents are often surprised at how quickly their children’s language skills blossom when they enter a Montessori toddler or preschool classroom. They are astonished that our preschoolers learn to read and write before they enter elementary school.

We don’t do achieve this rapid verbal skills development by drilling children in group language exercises and forcing them to repeat vocabulary in rote ways. Instead, we do what we’ve now discovered is consistent with the guidelines of the most up-to-date research: we individualize our instruction to each child and the things that fascinate him in the moment.

It’s all part of the Montessori “follow the child” approach. And as this research shows, it’s also something you can also try at home!

Heike Larson

Just not good enough: why your child deserves a better curriculum

If you attended Elementary Curriculum Night, you had a sneak-peek into LePort’s unique approach to education. [See the videos at the bottom if you weren’t able to attend.]

In this newsletter, I’d like to offer you further insight into what makes LePort’s curriculum different. How does LePort’s approach, which we call “Knowledge for Life”, compare with the California Standards?

Almost everyone agrees that there’s something wrong with “teaching to the test”, the practice of focusing in school on memorizing and drilling for standardized tests. But this practice is based on the California Standards—the textbooks, lessons and outcome measures approved by State education committees.

Why Do We Study Science

Science education is a staple of modern schooling. One rarely hears anyone question the value or necessity of teaching our children science. But what is the reason behind this view? Why should a child study science?

Despite today’s focus on standardized test and national content standards, it’s clear that the purpose of science education cannot merely be to ensure that children score well on standardized tests of science. (Why have those tests?) The same is true of any answer of the form that science education is necessary to ensure that a child will succeed in high school science, or be ready for college many years down the road. (Why should science be taught at those levels?)

Focusing on Focus

As parents, we know that children are not automatically able to focus. When a toddler loses interest in a toy, she stops paying attention. She can’t just will herself to keep going.

So how is it that a child eventually acquires the mental stamina necessary to master skills such as reading? How is it that in later years, a high schooler is able to resist the temptation to check her Facebook account and keep at a demanding essay?

In his recent article, “Learning How to Focus on Focus”, the Wall Street Journal’s Jonah Lehrer suggests that it’s the child’s capacity to engaged in focused attention that marks the difference. The key, says Lehrer, is “what psychologists call “executive function,” a collection of cognitive skills that allow us to exert control over our thoughts and impulses.”

“Executive function” refers to the skills underlying a person’s ability to choose to sustain attention on a particular task, despite distractions. Strong executive function is highly correlated with many desirable behaviors, not just an ability to study and succeed in school:

Children who could better regulate their impulses and attention were four times less likely to have a criminal record, three times less likely to be addicted to drugs and half as likely to become single parents. In many instances, the ability to utilize executive control was more predictive of adult outcomes than either IQ scores or socioeconomic status.

Research suggests that executive functioning is a learned skill, and that a child’s school environment and curriculum content can make a huge difference. Dr. Adele Diamond, a neuroscientist at the University of British Columbia, has catalogued a list of activities that develop executive functioning. Dr. Diamond also notes that certain educational approaches, such as Montessori, consistently increase the capacity for executive function in children. Yet, notes Lehrer in his article, “despite this impressive evidence, most schools do virtually nothing to develop executive function.”

While “developing executive function” isn’t how we would have coined what we do at LePort, one of the reasons we champion the Montessori approach is that it teaches children how to focus. In Montessori, children are placed in a carefully prepared environment and then encouraged to choose from an array of fascinating activities. Montessori materials are specially designed to encourage extended engagement, so they can enable a child to build mental stamina. And extended, two to three hour long “work periods” give a child the luxury of time to persist with an activity much longer than a typical, adult-let preschool schedule of 30 minutes this, 30 minutes that would ever allow. It’s no surprise that the result is that our students acquire an enhanced capacity for executive functioning.

When you see Montessori children engaged with the materials in their classrooms, intently focused on building up the Pink Tower, or tying bows on a Dressing Frame, or coloring in complex geometric shapes with the Metal Insets, they are getting a “two-fer”: they are learning about volume, practicing self-care and pencil control, while they are also building up that foundational skill of concentration.

As Mr. Lehrer writes in the article, “it’s not enough to drill kids in arithmetic and hope they develop delayed gratification by accident. We need to teach the skills of executive function directly and creatively.”

In Montessori, it’s never either arithmetic or executive function. The beauty of Montessori is doing both at the same time.

Healthy eating starts with knowing foods

In a recent segment of ABC’s Food Revolution show, host Jamie Oliver hypothesizes about the poor food choices made by children and adults alike. Oliver holds up common vegetables—tomato, cauliflower, potatoes, eggplant—and asks elementary school-age children to name them.

At LePort, the “passion for learning” is kept alive

What does medieval history have to do with a juicy steak from a modern, upscale restaurant? Read on, watch the video and find out!

In a recent LA Times article, education reporter Karin Klein reflects on her experience at her children’s back-to-school nights:

Drive: Keeping a Child’s Love of Learning Alive

Every school we know talks about instilling a love of learning in children. But what does that actually mean?

Daniel Pink’s book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us highlights the importance of self-directed, autonomous learning, of learning that is aimed at getting better, at achieving mastery at tasks the child himself perceives as meaningful. The best learning makes the process of learning autotelic, meaning motivated by the pleasure of the experience itself. Children in such environments exhibit a sense of purpose and curiosity, they are fully engaged in what they do, they have, in the words of one scientist, many rewarding flow experiences.

Silence: An Unexpected Montessori Benefit

When parents first visit a well-run Montessori school, they often comment on how quiet the classrooms are compared to many other environments where groups of preschoolers come together. It’s true: our classrooms are quiet—not quiet in the sense of totally silent, but quiet in a busy, active, yet very civilized way. Read more

Creative Play and Montessori Principles

Several recent articles in major newspapers discussed the demise of creativity in kids, and linked it to a lack of “unstructured, messy play.” For example, The New York Times reports:

For several years, studies and statistics have been mounting that suggest the culture of play in the United States is vanishing. Children spend far too much time in front of a screen, educators and parents lament — 7 hours 38 minutes a day on average, according to a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation last year. And only one in five children live within walking distance (a half-mile) of a park or playground, according to a 2010 report by the federal Centers for Disease Control, making them even less inclined to frolic outdoors.

Behind the numbers is adult behavior as well as children’s: Parents furiously tapping on their BlackBerrys in the living room, too stressed by work demands to tolerate noisy games in the background. Weekends consumed by soccer, lacrosse and other sports leagues, all organized and directed by parents. The full slate of lessons (chess, tae kwon do, Chinese, you name it) and homework beginning in the earliest grades.

We’d agree with many of the issues these articles highlight, such as the deplorable amount of time US kids spend in front of TVs and computer screens each day, or the creativity-stifling impact of teaching that focuses on improving standardized, multiple-choice test scores.

At the same time, we don’t agree with the view of creative development underlying these articles. They pieces intermix valid criticisms of forced parental structure or too much computer time with a lot of talk about encouraging messiness, putting up with chaos, clutter and uncertainty, and fostering the child’s imagination by letting fantasy run wild. The implicit assumption, which we dispute, is that creativity is borne out of disorder and impulsivity. Polemics against too much forced structure are important and valuable. But more important is the answer to the question of why play is so important to children, of how, fundamentally, creativity comes about—and what the connection is to a child’s intellectual development.

Notice that descriptors such as “clutter” and “noisiness” evoke a picture of an environment quite different from a Montessori classroom, which seems to suggest that the structure of Montessori—the sequential materials, the orderliness, the purposefulness, the calm—are in some way undercutting a child’s creative development. If this were true, then why are Montessori educated children renowned for their curiosity, their creative problem solving, their ability to think outside of the box? Put differently, does a Montessori education stifle imagination and rob children of the essential play of childhood, as these articles suggest?

In our view, nothing could be further from the truth. The superficial messiness of play, the focus on imagination and chaos, obscures a more fundamental difference between play and many other activities. The New York Times authors get close to this essential attribute when they discuss a need for “unstructured, child-led and child-created” activities, such as building a fort out of sofa cushions, making up elaborate pretend stories to act out, or drawing creative pictures, and contrast them with adult-led, pre-structured pursuits, such as organized soccer leagues, step-by-step adult-led crafts sessions, or foreign language classes.

In our view, what is really missing from many children’s experiences is not a license to engage in impulsivity per se, but rather an environment which enables children to independently choose to develop and pursue their own interests, and which equips them with the skills and knowledge to do so competently and successfully. Let’s look at these three elements in turn: choice, pursuit of interests, and knowledge and skills.

First, to engage in creativity, a person’s mind has to be voluntarily engaged in an activity. Whether it is drawing a painting, writing an article, or solving a challenging puzzle, a mind works best when it wants to do something, not for external rewards (stickers, grades, trophies, praise), but for the satisfaction of the activity itself. When children play, they by definition do so by their own choice: no-one forces a child to pretend to sail off to adventures on the living room sofa, and no stars are handed out for arriving at the pretend destination.

Second, creative people actively pursue a goal. While you can passively default to sitting in front of the TV, you cannot passively play, or passively achieve any worthwhile goal in life, whether it is building friendships, achieving success in a career, or mastering a hobby. Play is goal-directed activity, even though it might appear unstructured from the outside. It also typically involves problem-solving in the broadest sense. When 3-year-olds builds a sofa-cushion fort, they have to figure out how to place the cushions, where to get that sheet they need for the roof, how to gain an adults’ help if they can’t get up to the shelf where the sheet is hiding. It’s their goal—and they solve whatever problems arise in their pursuit of that goal.

Third, creative people have to have skills and knowledge to actually achieve their ends. No matter how inspired a writer may be, how creative his story idea may sound, he needs to have mastered grammar, acquired a strong vocabulary, and have learned the personal skills, such as organization and time management, which will enable him to successfully pursue such a long-range, challenging goal. Especially in today’s advanced civilization, ignorance makes creativity impossible. Worthwhile achievements of any type require a plan, and the ability to execute on it. Play, at its best, is skill and knowledge building, in a wide variety of forms. The toddler who stacks Legos is working on fine motor skills; the 4-year-olds who pretend-play at shopping are practicing language skills and daily processes they’ll need to master to become successful adults. Even video games derive a lot of their appeal from building skills—albeit often very limited skills only applicable in the video game’s own world.

Montessori education fully embraces these three principles. In Montessori classrooms, children have 2-3 hour periods of unstructured work time, each morning and afternoon. Each child chooses what activity to take from the shelves and work with. He actively engages with the material, he keeps at it until he masters it. It is his choice, his goal, his effort that will bring him the satisfaction of mastering a new material. Every activity offered to children in a Montessori classroom is carefully designed to help the child develop a critical skill, whether it is learning to pour without spilling, or learning the letter sounds. In fact, Dr. Montessori was convinced that a child has to know about reality first, before he can be truly creative, so she created a well-rounded collection of materials, one that gives children a balanced exposure to the basic elements of the world and human knowledge. This balanced education ranges from basic life skills to simple arts activities; from training the senses to observe carefully, to categorizing observations systematically so they can be easily retrieved later; from math and language, to geography, science and music. Dr. Montessori saw this rounded education as the foundation from which an individual can develop true creativity, in the sense of doing new things with real materials and ideas. Every item in the Montessori classroom is carefully chosen to give each child the “keys” to the world that may serve to spark his interest in discovery and creativity.

Montessori students, from the earliest age, learn that they are in charge—they choose, they pursue, they build skills and learn how to use their time and resources effectively. (And, by the way, they also learn to clean up their own messes, and acquire the habits of mental and physical order that are, in fact, another prerequisite of real creativity!) By daily experience, they become active explorers who enjoy tackling and mastering new challenges, rather than passive consumers reluctant to move off the couch, or to open any book beyond required homework.

The crucial difference is that Montessori education develops the capacity for creative effort, rather than mere impulsivity. It is this, the ability to apply oneself joyously to the task of pursuing or creating something personally meaningful, that is the hallmark of creativity. This is why the child who is allowed to uncritically “do what he wants,” without developing a capacity for discipline in pursuing what he really wants, inevitably ends up passive. Buy your child a new toy every time he gets bored, without giving him the opportunity to use his mind to find something interesting to do with the toys he has, and the result will be that he simply becomes less willing to do the work of escaping his own boredom.

So if your children want to build castles in the yard and have a princess picnic with a friend, or engage in messy arts projects, as Montessorians we say that by all means you should encourage them to do so. We just encourage you to keep in mind that creativity is the ability to apply effort in uniquely interesting ways. And because of this, we hold that a pro-effort, child-led classroom environment such as is found in a well-run Montessori school, helps rather than hinders the development of creativity. And as the icing on the cake, it will also help your youngsters learn to clean up the messes they make in their daily play!

– Heike Larson

Tiger Mom vs. Enjoying Childhood: A Choice you Don’t Have to Make

A recent article excerpting a chapter of Amy Chua’s book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, has sparked quite a debate on parenting and educational choices.

Ms. Chua and her supporters argue that it takes an authoritarian approach to parenting to prepare children for successful adulthood in today’s competitive world. For instance, Ms. Chua writes “My Western friends who consider themselves strict make their children practice their instruments 30 minutes every day. An hour at most. For a Chinese mother, the first hour is the easy part. It’s hours two and three that get tough.” Read more

Choose Prevention, Not Treatment

Two weeks ago, I read the following urgent requests for help on our local parenting resource, Berkley Parents Net’s “Advice Wanted” newsletter:

Kindergartener’s writing skills not great – repeat?
… The main issue we’ve had though has been his fine motor skills – particularly his writing. He’s doing ok but definitely in the lower part of the class, in terms of writing skills. … his writing is shaky and messy. When he rushes through it, it just isn’t super clear. He isn’t one to sit quietly—he likes to move through things quickly and I feel that is part of the problem. … I know that there is only more writing to come in first grade and I wonder what I can do to help him through this besides just practicing with him? How do I get him to slow down more and concentrate?

Nonverbal Learning Disorder
… My [3rd grade] son scored exceptionally high for verbal, fine for math and very low for non-verbal [on testing in school.] His handwriting has always been awful, very poor fine motor skills, clumsy and poor gross motor skills, voracious reader, meltdowns at homework. No problem getting social cues or getting sarcasm and humor. I have now read just about EVERYTHING about NLD, especially the oft-repeated line about NLD has the highest suicide rate for all learning disabilities!

9 year old twin with reading problems
… one [fraternal twin] is struggling with reading and falling behind. They are in 4th grade, but she is still having trouble recognizing simple words that she has seen and heard many times. Three years ago she went through the public school’s individual evaluation process. They determined her reading skills were developing slowly, but that she did not need special attention. Now we believe she DOES need some help, and we are wondering where to turn.

Three children, three sets of problems – but, in my view, one common denominator: an inadequate education system that does not properly, sequentially teach the skills children need to succeed in school and in life. While better schooling obviously cannot prevent all problems—some children of course do have real, inborn learning disabilities—I can’t help thinking that with better schooling, we would not see academic learning issues appear with such frequency or in such severity. I can’t say that for sure, but reading these tragic commentaries left me wishing that more children had the opportunity to experience a Montessori preschool and elementary education, so that more people could evaluate the difference.

Take the first case, poor handwriting skills, which appear to be in part due to an inability to concentrate on a piece of work for an extended time. The common assumption is that a child should naturally be able to concentrate. But in fact, being able to focus, i.e. to fully engage in a task for an extended period of time, is a learned skill. Not all adults are automatically able to focus on a task, and among those that can, there are radical differences in how well they can do it. Focusing is a skill that children must acquire at an early age, and the extent to which they acquire it depends on the quality of their educational experience. In a Montessori classroom, children get introduced to a wide variety of captivating materials that engage their curiosity, and with which they then practice for 30, 45 or even 60 minutes, during the long, uninterrupted work periods. Such materials are designed to help introduce a child to the process of sustaining attention over time—they are optimal for developing the capacity to focus. Whatever the precise impact such an environment makes, it is a known fact that Montessori students often persist in one task for hours at a time. Just anecdotally, my barely 4-year-old daughter just spent four hours at school a couple of days ago drawing a large map of the world with the outlines of all the continents, then coloring in the continents and oceans and labeling them by cutting out small pieces of paper with their names, and gluing them carefully on the map. Because of her Montessori experience, I am quite confident that she will not have issues concentrating on her handwriting, come Kindergarten…

The second child’s struggle has to do with deficient motor skills. Again, motor development can be assumed to be automatic, or can be treated as a learned skill. In a Montessori classroom, motor development is something children work on sequentially over time. 3-year-olds begin with simple pouring exercises, which help with hand control and coordination; they may strengthen their pincer grip by transferring small objects from one container to the next. 4-year-olds may string small beads, us droppers to transfer water, or work with the Metal Insets to slowly build the finger and hand control needed to properly hold and control a pencil. Children learn to carry trays with materials, carefully navigating the obstacle course of mats, chairs and children around a Montessori classroom. In the process, they learn to control their bodies, strengthen their gross motor skills, and move purposefully. While it is true that to greater or lesser extents fine and gross motor skills may just develop naturally, a Montessori preschool ensures that children develop these skills early and fully, before the lack of motor control becomes an issue in elementary school.

The last child’s struggle with reading is somewhat harder to evaluate. No doubt, there are clear, defined reading problems that are not a result of a child’s educational environment. Still, what makes me suspect that a wrong educational approach may have something to do with this case is the mom’s concern about her daughter not being able to read words she has seen and heard frequently. Too many public schools still use the “whole word” method for teaching reading, where children are expected to memorize whole words on sight, as though English were Chinese, and words were irreducible symbols that had to be recognized whole. Nothing could be farther from the truth: English, as we know, is an alphabetical language, where letters or letter combinations stand for certain sounds. Montessori schools embrace this fact, and teach letters and sounds starting in preschool. With careful, sequential instruction that proceeds from individual letters to multi-letter phonographs such as “oo” and “sh”, and which includes a wide variety of materials, such as the moveable alphabet to build words, and the command cards to act out simple written instructions, our students internalize the sound-letter correspondence. They also learn common sight words as an adjunct to their phonetic development, but the emphasis is on decoding, not memorizing strings of symbols. This is why, by the end of their 3rd year (the Kindergarten equivalent), Montessori students know not only to read a short list of words they have seen many times before, but acquire a systematic approach to reading any word they encounter. The whole written world is thus opened to their exploration.

My advice to parents, based on my experience working in education and my observations of my own children, is to proactively think about preventing such common problems as low attention span, poor motor skill development, or whole-word/guessing approaches to reading. Prevention works better than treatment. And, even more importantly, children who learn crucial skills naturally in preschool are much more likely to acquire and retain the love of learning that so often atrophies when children struggle unnecessarily in the early elementary grades.

Heike Larson

Don’t Redshirt for Kindergarten–Eliminate Fixed Timeline

Over the past year, much has been said about the right time to start students in Kindergarten. Starting in fall 2012, California will move up the age cut-off, so only students who turn 5 before September 1^st can enter Kindergarten. (Previously, the cut-off date was December 2^nd.) Researchers have reported on a growing trend that parents are holding back children who would otherwise be eligible for Kindergarten, so as to give them an extra year of maturity. Much of this concern is due to the “increasingly academic nature” of Kindergarten, and worries that students may not yet be ready, at age 5, to sit still and pay attention in class.

These concerns are understandable and valid in the traditional public school model, and many parents rightly agonize over the decision of when to start their children in Kindergarten.

Fundamentally, though, the issue is not when children should start Kindergarten, but whether the transition into Kindergarten needs to be as difficult and consequential as it is in the public school system (and many private schools). What is it about Kindergarten that makes it such a negative experience for so many children?

More than anything, it is the artificial and unnecessary change in behavioral expectations and academic methodology. At age 5, public school children are suddenly expected to shift from a preschool’s free-play environment to the rigorous, group-based structure of a traditional classroom. They are required to sit still, to be quiet and listen, and to follow a tightly-scheduled plan of 30 minutes of this subject, then 30 minutes of that. They are expected to transition from playing with Legos or trains or doll houses, to completing monotonous worksheets. They are, on a dime, required to stop following their own interests and impulses, and to adhere instead to adult-set, adult-led procedures and goals. Without preparation or training, children are expected to transform their entire approach to school. No wonder parents are concerned about when and whether their children will succeed at making this transition!

This is all very unfortunate, because there is such a beautiful alternative to this whole manufactured struggle: Montessori education. Montessori schools do not require such a black and white decision about when to start Kindergarten. They do not subject a child entering her Kindergarten year to abrupt, radical changes that are inconsistent with their actual needs. Nor do they leave a preschooler unprepared for the actual, gradual changes that are forthcoming.

In a well-run Montessori school, students aged 3-6 are grouped together in one classroom, called the Primary classroom. The classroom is equipped with a wide range of educational materials. It offers simple “practical life” exercises, such as pouring or sorting, for the youngest children, as well as very advanced academic materials, which can take some 6-year-olds all the way through reading chapter books, studying introductory grammar, and doing arithmetic into the thousands (skills typically not taught until 1^st grade or later in most other schools.)

In a Montessori program, each child progresses through the sequence of materials at her own pace, under the guidance of a trained, observant teacher. Because all of the work is individual, because children practice as long as they need to achieve mastery, because children move ahead only if and when they are ready, there is no need to make each child transition into “academic Kindergarten.” Academic challenges get tackled naturally, as the child is academically ready—not when it suits a school system’s artificial schedule. [Many Montessori schools also move children up to 1^st grade when they are developmentally ready, not on a fixed September timeline.]

In fact, Montessori students are never forced to make the radical shift in behavior that public schools demand. Not in their Kindergarten year, and not in the higher grades. Instead, they gradually grow over time into more scheduled routines and abstract content (including class lectures and group lessons as it becomes age-appropriate). Using the Montessori materials, they steadily build their attention spans, learn to pace and plan their own work, and progress from concrete to abstract. For example, they first learn to solve multiplication problems with the Golden Bead materials, then, as they solidify the principles involved and become able to hold them more abstractly in their minds, they move to solving them with just pencil and paper.

By the time they graduate from the “lower elementary classroom” (ages 6-9), students are ready for the more conceptual, abstract studies of upper elementary, as well as for the more structured schedule, and are eager to discover the exciting insights that come next.

Fundamentally, the question is not when children should start Kindergarten, but why a system that so clearly violates children’s most fundamental developmental needs continues to be accepted as the norm for schooling in this country.

Heike Larson

The Power of Play

I recently came across a not-for-profit group called “Playworks.” This group provides coaches to public schools in underprivileged neighborhoods to help make recess a better experience. Here’s what they write on their website:

For many elementary school principals, recess is the toughest part of the day. That’s when all the trouble starts—the teasing, fighting, bullying, injuries, referrals and suspensions. This video demonstrates the “before and after” effect when safe, fun playtime is introduced in the schoolyard. A trained Playworks coach teaches and runs games designed to build leadership and foster teamwork. As a result, kids are more physically active, and principals and teachers consistently credit Playworks for transforming not just the playground and but the entire school learning environment.

Playworks is to be commended for its innovation. While Playworks focuses on underprivileged neighborhoods, the problem they address is present in many elementary and middle schools. When young children who have not yet learned mature interactions are left alone at recess, their worst tendencies come out. Uncorrected, recess can easily degenerate into a dreaded period of bullying, harassment and free-for-all. Many students who transfer to LePort, even those from reputable public elementary schools, comment on similar bad recess experiences. Read more

Praise Effort, not Smarts

With the New Year upon us, it is the time for New Years Resolutions. Here’s one that may strike you as odd, but that you may want to consider for your family: praise your children less.

Odd as it sounds, this is a key insight by researcher Carol Dweck, as reported in the recent book “NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children”, by Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman.

While many parents and teachers believe they can strengthen children’s confidence and help them achieve more by praising them for their intelligence and achievements, Dr. Dweck’s team of researchers has discovered that praising smarts can lead to an avoidance of challenges. Read more

Choosing a School

Before I started working with LePort, I once had the following encounter with a friend who was getting ready to send her daughter to school. She excitedly told me that her daughter had been admitted to the Kindergarten class of a private school in the Oakland, California area. Curious to hear more, I asked her how she chose the school. She told me, in great detail, about the school’s beautiful classrooms, the artist-in-residence program, the new auditorium, and the emphasis placed on diversity in the classroom.

I nodded along, impressed. Then I asked her about the curriculum: what her daughter would be taught in Kindergarten and later grades, how the teaching would happen, the content and method of the school, etc. She didn’t know and hadn’t thought to ask about it.

I often remember this encounter when I think about how difficult it is as a parent to figure out how to choose a school. We as parents aren’t education experts. Because we aren’t always sure what to look for, we sometimes get carried away with positives or negatives we observe in one category (e.g. facilities, the appearance of the school, or extracurriculars). We can forget that there are whole other categories that we aren’t considering or factoring into our decision.

It would be as though you went house shopping, saw a house with a gorgeous kitchen that just knocked your socks off, then bought it at once on the basis of the kitchen. Only later you might realize that the plumbing needed to be ripped out and replaced, that there weren’t enough bathrooms to suit your needs, and that the layout was inconvenient, so that you wound up not using a good portion of the house.

If you had catalogued in advance all of the different categories of things you wanted from a house—perhaps made yourself a checklist before visiting—you might not have been so immediately sold. You might have kept investigating and found a house that not only had a gorgeous kitchen, but that met all of your other needs as well.

It’s the same when shopping for schools. Fancy auditoriums and stimulating extracurriculars are valuable and important, but there are other factors that may be even more important. I now know that one of the most important factors that most people don’t consider is the curriculum.

The curriculum is what your child will actually be learning, and how (by what teaching method) he will be learning it. The curriculum is the difference between whether your child learns what he needs to learn or not. Parents should reserve a place of honor for curriculum on their checklist when they evaluate a prospective school.

My guess, though, is that even when parents try to assess a school’s curriculum and teaching methods, they find themselves stumped—hence the need to rely on more visible markers like facilities and extracurriculars. Curriculum is a complex, intangible value that is difficult to evaluate when you visit the school. This is particularly true as it is often communicated in “education lingo”, such as “constructivist math”, “whole language”, or “arts-integrated curriculum”. Having spent some time looking at the websites of other schools, I was surprised at how little information they generally provide on the “what” and “how” of their teaching. (Though most do offer a lot of detail about buildings, athletics and arts programs.)

To help demystify the intangible of “curriculum” and enable a parent to judge for him or herself, I like to break it down as follows (this is the advice we give to prospective parents at LePort, but it would apply to any parent who is trying to evaluate a prospective school):

Does the school have a clearly defined, written curriculum?
What core subjects does the school expect all children to succeed at?
- Language arts—including spelling, vocabulary, writing and grammar as separate courses
- Literature—with a focus on classics of today and yesterday (as against basal reader collections or adolescent fiction)
- History—taught as a chronological story which children experience (as against the disconnected grab-bag typically taught in Social Studies)
- Geography—taught as the fascinating study of different cultures
- Mathematics—taught with a dual focus on skill practice and conceptual understanding (as against rote facts memorization or “constructive math”)
- Science—as the exciting discovery of the world, not a memorization of disconnected words and jargon

Does the school integrate personal development into each child’s day-to-day experience (as against a dry sermon on virtues)?
Does the school offer a wide range of extracurriculars, field trips and special events to build a community and to celebrate life?

Heike Larson

Why Don’t Students Like School?

We are all familiar with the picture of a classroom full of kids passing notes to each other, doodling on their desks, throwing spitballs, staring out the window—anything but listening to the teacher droning on at the front of the room. (Think Ferris Beuller’s Day Off, but remember that this problem begins a lot earlier than high school.) There is a new book out by cognitive psychologist Daniel T. Willingham, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, that has some valuable insights on how to make classes more interesting to students.

Dr. Willingham’s contribution is simple but brilliant. He asks what truly motivates children. His answer is that the type of motivation that will really translate into kids paying attention in class and learning actively is the type of motivation that comes from the pure cognitive pleasure of solving problems:

Solving problems brings pleasure. When I say “problem solving” in this book, I mean any cognitive work that succeeds; it might be understanding a difficult passage of prose, planning a garden, or sizing up an investment opportunity. There is a sense of satisfaction, of fulfillment, in successful thinking.

He continues: “It’s notable that the pleasure is in the solving of the problem. . . . [T]here’s not great pleasure in simply knowing the answer.”

Dr. Willingham advises that schools can accomplish this by setting up their lessons in a very deliberate way. Lessons should start with a problem of a specific kind: one that has the right level of difficulty, so that students do have to make a cognitive effort, but so that it is still within their capabilities to in fact solve the problem. He advises educators to try to create a meaningful question in the student’s mind, before offering an answer: “Sometimes I think that we as teachers are so eager to get to the answer that we do not devote sufficient time to developing the question.”

In math, for instance, to take a simple example—before we teach children order of operations, we motivate that material by making the problem that it solves real to the students. We ask the class to calculate the answer to the math problem 5 + 10 x 3. Some of the students come up with an answer of 35, some with 45. Students are puzzled as to why there is this split between the two different answers. It piques their curiosity. When the teacher explains the rules for stipulating which order of operations is correct, those rules are answering a question that they are now very interested to learn, and so they will connect with and retain the information. By contrast, if one were to teach the rules governing order of operations without taking that extra moment to highlight the problem the rules solve, the students would be disconnected from and uninterested in the material. It would seem like a set of arbitrary rules to be memorized, rather than a useful tool.

The pattern might play out differently, in, say, a history class. There, the “detective story principle” might mean asking students to think about their favorite things—foods, places, friends, clothes—and then asking them what would make them give all of those up. When the teacher goes on to discuss the asceticism of the medieval monks, she takes care to pique their curiosity, based on this initial discussion. Why would the medieval monk actually want to give up all of his favorite things? That question becomes a mystery that the child wants to solve, and which his mind pursues throughout the history lesson designed to answer it.

As Dr. Willingham so aptly reminds us, it’s the question that first piques our interest, and motivates us to seek and internalize the answer. Being told an answer divorced from the question is far less effective. It fails to capitalize on the natural pattern of human cognition, which seeks answers in response to questions.

At LePort we have come to call this the “detective story principle”. Good educators across the globe are likely to recognize this same principle in their own teaching, though they may call it by different names.

The two examples above are from two individual classes in two different subjects. But once an education specialist is on the look out for this kind of opportunity to raise and then satisfy questions in students’ minds, we have found at LePort that she will discover such opportunities everywhere.

It is by no means a simple task to structure every lesson in this fashion, and there are plenty of wrinkles waiting to be ironed out. But Dr. Willingham’s insight names the principle, which is a big step forward. In our own classes, where we have applied this principle, we have often seen it make the difference between a child who gazes out the window, and a child who learns eagerly and loves school.

Heike Larson

LePort Schools Blog

A recent Washington Post article by Robert J. Samuelson summarizes the failures of “school reform” in our nation’s public schools. Mr. Samuelson notes that 17-year-olds have made no progress in reading or math between 1971 and 2008, according to the most reliable test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress. He argues that all of the usual justifications for these disappointing results just don’t hold water:

Standard theories don’t explain this meager progress. Too few teachers? Not really. From 1970 to 2008, the student population increased 8 percent and the number of teachers rose 61 percent. The student-teacher ratio has fallen sharply, from 27-to-1 in 1955 to 15-to-1 in 2007. Are teachers paid too little? Perhaps, but that’s not obvious. In 2008, the average teacher earned $53,230; two full-time teachers married to each other and making average pay would belong in the richest 20 percent of households (2008 qualifying income: $100,240). Maybe more preschool would help. Yet, the share of 3- and 4-year-olds in preschool has rocketed from 11 percent in 1965 to 53 percent in 2008.

Mr. Samuelson believes that the deeper cause of poor test scores is “shrunken student motivation.” In other words, students aren’t doing better in school because they aren’t generally motivated to learn, and aren’t interested in the specific material being taught. Read more

Learning to Write Right

Should Children First be Taught Cursive Handwriting?

Cursive handwriting is one of the most polarizing topics in early education. Some argue that it is a core component of language arts training that every child should master. Others that it’s an outdated practice made obsolete by computer technology. The Wall Street Journal recently joined the debate. Author Gwendolyn Bounds published a fascinating article titled How Handwriting Trains the Brain. Bounds quotes recent research using advanced imaging technology that shows that “writing by hand is more than just a way to communicate. The practice helps with learning letters and shapes, can improve idea composition and expression, and may aid fine motor-skill development.”

At LePort, we fall squarely on the side of those who argue that learning to handwrite in cursive is an important skill. The benefits of cursive, in our view, go far beyond being able to produce beautiful script. Cursive minimizes errors involving letter reversals, and so facilitates reading development; it helps students distinguish separate words more clearly in their own writing, and helps visually internalize the word as a grammatical unit; it strengthens the fine motor skills involved in a smooth, prolonged motion.

But in order to fully evaluate whether teaching cursive is a value, we think it’s equally important to consider the question of when it is to be taught. What is the proper time in the educational process to introduce children to cursive handwriting?

According to Maria Montessori, children should learn cursive right from the start, before they learn to print. Montessori points out that the motions involved in cursive writing come much more naturally to a child. Because cursive handwriting results in a much smoother and rewarding learning process, and because it facilitates subsequent development of reading and writing skills, it makes sense for it to come first.

Students at high quality Montessori schools usually begin writing in cursive at ages 4 or 5, using a special, tactile material called the Sandpaper Letters. Individual letters made of sandpaper are mounted on beautifully painted wooden boards, and children trace them with their “writing fingers”, as they listen to and say the sound the letter makes. Naturally, step by step, they transition to paper and pencil. This multi-sensory, active method of teaching writing works: 5-year-olds at such schools typically write full sentences in beautiful cursive, learn to read fluently at the same time—and thoroughly enjoy the learning experience.

This is in stark contrast to the traditional method of first starting with block letters, and then retraining 3^rd graders to write in cursive afterwards. As the Journal mentions, parents routinely balk at the idea of their children spending time learning cursive: “I can’t believe you are wasting a minute on this.” Given that their children are in elementary school (as opposed to preschool), these parents are right to complain. A major justification of teaching cursive is that it makes subsequent reading and writing easier to learn. Retraining cursive after learning print defeats that important purpose, and does indeed render cursive training both a source of frustration, and a waste precious classroom time and resources.

How much better to learn cursive from the start, with a method that is enjoyable for the child! Done in this way, a student gets all the direct and indirect benefits from fluent, beautiful handwriting, with none of the pain of learning it at the wrong time.

Ray Girn

Igniting a Passion to Learn

Take a moment to think back over the different experiences you’ve had during the past year. What do you remember? When you do a quick survey of the significant events of your recent life, what type of things come to mind?

If you’re like most people, the events you tend to remember are more emotionally charged than those you’ve forgotten. Your mind goes to the gripping movie you watched, the novel that you couldn’t put down–but not that dry lecture at the long work conference. You have a vivid memory of the exuberant bike ride where you finally made it up that hill in target time, or the morning when you pedaled up over a fog bank to see a beautiful sunrise—but not the everyday training slog you conducted much more frequently. It’s hard to recall the daily routine of cleaning around the house and washing dirty laundry, but easy to invoke an image of the moment when your son took his first step right before your eyes, or the time you and your daughter had that wonderfully silly pillow fight, the one that left both of you out of breath from giggling so hard.

It’s not surprising that your lasting memories tend to involve events in which you are emotionally engaged. To the contrary, it intuitively makes sense: the reason you’re emotionally affected is that you care about what’s happening—and since you care, you’re more likely to remember it.

But why? What is it about being emotionally invested that enables greater retention?

In his recently published book, The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How, author Daniel Coyle offers us a fascinating answer.

Coyle argues first that learning of skills and memory occur as a result of particular way of being voluntarily engaged in a task—what he calls “deep practice”. Deep practice is a type of sustained focus in which a person is intently focused on completing a task superlatively. Coyle suggests that such deep practice results, neurologically, in the accelerated growth of myelin, an insulating substance that wraps around brain cells carrying signals from location to location the brain, and thereby strengthens those neural pathways.

The connection to emotions is this: only when learners are emotionally connected to the skill or knowledge they are pursuing are they sincerely motivated to put forth the effort that deep practice demands. Coyle argues that the will to engage in deep practice is ignited by emotional passion.

In his research, Coyle studied what he called talent hotbeds, places around the world where a certain talent–for music, baseball, learning–abounds, and observed that they all shared passion for what they do:

When I visited the talent hotbeds, I saw a lot of passion. It showed in the way people carried their violins, cradled their soccer balls, and sharpened their pencils. It showed in the way they treated bare-bones practice areas as if they were cathedrals; in the alert, respectful gazes that followed a coach. The feeling wasn’t always shiny and happy—sometimes it was dark and obsessive, and sometimes it was like the quiet, abiding love you see in old married couples. But the passion was always there, providing the emotional rocket fuel that kept them firing their circuits, honing skills, getting better.

Coyle’s argument fits with what we’ve observed in our classrooms at LePort Schools. The best teaching is teaching that makes a values-based, emotional connection between students and the rigorous academic content they need to learn. Only if students connect what they are studying to their own values, only if they are sincerely interested and engaged with what they learn, will they consistently remember and be able to apply their knowledge to situations in their own lives. Engaging students emotionally in what they study is a fundamental principle of correct pedagogy, and a necessary component of ensuring that students develop a meaningful, deep, integrated knowledge base.

So how can material be made emotionally engaging? There are countless ways, large and small. Take a Montessori classroom. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the entire Montessori approach is geared towards the goal of ensuring learning is properly motivated—students are provided an environment in which their internally driven interests are what fuels their cognitive inquiries.

Or consider LePort’s middle school history curriculum. We interest students in the study of a given historical period in a number of ways, one of which is by dramatizing that period through the inclusion of rich, moving historical fiction—novels and plays that invest the students in the times they are learning about. For instance, after reading The Lantern Bearers (a book that tells the story of a young Roman boy’s life in a once-civilized Rome now ruled by Saxon barbarians) our students become much more engaged in learning about the Fall of Rome: the literary dramatization of the period makes it emotionally real and important. Our history program also invests students emotionally by tying what they learn to their own values and life experiences—i.e. to that which already matters emotionally. See a vivid example here.

The underlying principle here is age-old: when something matters to you, you pay attention much more closely. Or more simply, when you care, you focus more. What Daniel Coyle offers in The Talent Code is a fascinating new perspective on this principle: not only do you focus more, but you actually focus differently. This point, along with the rest of Coyle’s uniquely rich analysis of the mental and neurological processes underlying the retention of knowledge and skills, makes The Talent Code a book that all educators should take the time to read and reflect on.

Ray Girn

Few question what students are being taught or how.

Memorizing and drilling students, once thought out of fashion, is now back in vogue in schools across the country. In the wake of the “No Child Left Behind” act, the emphasis of teaching has shifted to basic skills, and to increasing performance on state-wide standardized multiple choice tests. And while many children, especially at middle class public schools, are scoring better on standardized tests, some educators are starting to wonder if these results might not be telling the whole story.

In his book The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don’t Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need – and What We Can Do About It, Dr. Tony Wagner questions the wisdom of the traditional teaching approach and the apparent excellence of suburban elementary, middle and high schools. It is an important book to read for parents and educators alike.

Dr. Wagner believes that even the best public schools spend too much class time on memorizing content and drilling on basic skills, and he suggests that this leaves students without the thinking skills and real, meaningful knowledge they need to succeed in life. He writes of his decades of experience as a teacher, researcher and education policy advisor:

What I have seen in some of our best public schools over the past decade is that while Johnny and Juan and Leticia are learning how to read, at least at a basic level, they are not learning how to think or care about what they read; nor are they learning to clearly communicate ideas orally and in writing. They memorize names and dates in history, but they cannot explain the larger significance of historical events. And they may be learning how to add, subtract, and multiply, but they have no understanding of how to think about numbers. Not knowing how to interpret statistics or gauge probability, many students cannot make sense of the graphs and charts they see every day in the newspaper. They are required to memorize (and usually quickly forget) a wide range of scientific facts, but very few know how to apply the scientific method—how to formulate a hypothesis, test it, and analyze the results. Finally, I have observed that the longer our children are in school, the less curious they become.

Dr. Tony Wagner

He quotes a scientist from MIT, who describes his two sons’ experience in science class in 4^th grade at one of the most acclaimed public schools in the country:

They went to the same school and had the same teacher. … My eldest son had a great experience. His class went over to the pond at Mount Auburn Cemetery and took samples from the muck. They brought them back to school and studied what they found. They discovered all kinds of creatures there –ones that even I hadn’t seen! It was great, ‘hands-on’ science, and it really motivated my son.

But my second son’s experience was totally different. Now all the kids had to take the MCAS test [annual standardized test required of all Massachusetts schools], and the teachers felt they couldn’t take the time for the ‘fun stuff.’ They felt they couldn’t take the time to collect and study the muck. They had to prepare fall the kids for the tests.

I worry about the future of science in this country… For kids to get passionate about science, they have to get their hands dirty—literally. They have to have labs where they study things in depth and learn to observe, instead of just memorizing facts from a textbook. The kids who take my intro lab courses today have gotten top scores on all the Advanced Placement science courses in their high schools, but they don’t know how to observe. I ask them to describe what they see in the microscopes, and they want to know what they should be looking for—what the right answer is.

Dr. Tony Wagner

In our view, this is one of the best summaries of what is wrong in education today: children memorize words, but don’t learn about the world.

Mr. Wagner continues with an even more alarming observation, namely, that the public education establishment—from educators to policy makers, from researchers to concerned business men—is not even asking the right questions to address the problem: “The only debate taking place about education in America today is simply whether to modify certain provisions of NCLB [the No Child Left Behind education act.] Few question what students are being taught or how.”

Yet these are exactly the questions an intelligent parent ought to ask of potential schools: Why are you teaching—what is the goal of your education? What are you teaching my child? And how are you teaching it? If you share our belief that children need to be engaged at school, that they need to care about what they learn, that the content of education matters (=what children learn), as does the pedagogy (=how children learn), then come and observe in our Montessori elementary school and Montessori middle school programs. You’ll discover an education like no other, and may just decide that it is time to question your own child’s educational options and explore Montessori for your child.

I can do it all by myself!

With the new school year, we have a lot of new little friends who have joined our toddler classrooms. Naturally, this can be an anxious time for children and parents alike. Many of these children may be leaving mom or dad for the first time, and even for experienced daycare children, a Montessori classroom is an entirely new experience. They are taking a step in growing up, in becoming independent young people, and we do our best to make it a great experience for them.

That’s why we are so excited when we receive reports like this from Judi Chimits at our Mission Viejo Campus:

Parent Marcie U. said that her son, Dylan, who just started in Pre-primary (our toddler program) last week, is already starting to do things for himself at home. He’s pushing in chairs, putting things away, and he tried to put his cup in the sink (he’s too short and it spilled everywhere, but he tried to do it himself)!

I particularly love these stories of budding independence with our youngest students; they exemplify what’s at the core of the Montessori preschool philosophy of education. As Dr. Montessori explains:

If teaching is to be effective with young children, it must assist them to advance on the way to independence. It must initiate them to those kinds of activities which they can perform themselves and which keep them from being a burden to others because of their inabilities. We must help them to learn how to … go up and down stairs, to wash themselves, to express their needs in a way that is clearly understood, and to attempt to satisfy their desires through their own efforts. All this is part of an education for independence.

Everyone knows that it requires much more time and patience to teach a child how to eat, wash and clothe himself than it does to feed, bathe and clothe him by oneself.

The one who does the former is an educator…

Tomorrow, I’ll be giving a Parent Education Seminar at our Yorba Linda campus titled: “Help Me Help Myself—Montessori Techniques for Fostering Independence”. It’s all about how we as parents can help toddlers and preschoolers do more for themselves.

It’s truly wonderful to see all these children coming into our school, eagerly learning these important life skills and even more importantly, developing a confidence in their ability to deal independently with the world that will stay with them for the rest of their lives. Welcome, young friends: we love to have you with us!

Heike Larson

THREE MONTESSORI PRESCHOOL DIFFERENCES: HOW WE TEACH

THREE MONTESSORI PRESCHOOL DIFFERENCES: WHAT CHILDREN LEARN

Should Children First be Taught Cursive Handwriting?

Stay in touch with LePort Montessori