Montessori Parenting: Some Thoughts on Holiday Gift Giving

It�s not how much we give, but how much love we put in giving. � Mother Teresa I met a fifth grade boy recently who was happy to share his f...

Montessori Values: Modeling Kindness During the Holiday Season

Maybe Christmas,� he thought, �doesn�t come from a Store. Maybe Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more! � Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Sto...

The Absorbent Mind, Chapter 23: Cohesion in the Social Unit

The great task of education must be to secure and to preserve a normality which, of its own nature, gravitates toward the center of perfecti...

Montessori Values � Practicing Thanksgiving Every Day

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others. � Cicero In the Montessori community, the lessons of Grace ...

The Absorbent Mind, Chapter 22: Social Development

�no one acting on the child from the outside can cause him to concentrate. Only he can organize his psychic life. � Maria Montessori The Abs...

Redirecting Versus Distracting in the Montessori Environment

What is the difference between redirecting and distracting children from unwanted behavior? The biggest difference is in the approach. Redir...

Guiding Children with Learning Disabilities in the Montessori Environment

Help me to help myself. �Maria Montessori The Child in the Family, p. 72. In her book Children Who are Not Yet Peaceful , Donna Bryant Goert...

The Absorbent Mind, Chapter 21: Children�s Possessiveness and Its Transformations

The child is the spiritual builder of mankind, and obstacles to his free development are the stones in the wall by which the soul of man has...

The Absorbent Mind, Chapter 20: Character Building is the Child�s Own Achievement

Children construct their own characters. �Maria Montessori The Absorbent Mind, p. 208. The Absorbent Mind, Chapter 20: Character Building is...

Working with Executive Function Challenges in the Montessori Environment

To let the child do as he likes when he has not yet developed any powers of control, is to betray the idea of freedom. �Maria Montessori The...

The Three-Period Lesson and Generalization: Helping Cognitive Processing

Along with controlled error and freedom to choose your own work, nothing is quite as Montessori as the three-period lesson. The three-period...

Difficulties with Executive Function in Childhood Development

A while back, we presented a blog called What is Executive Function? Montessori Perspectives . In that article, we discussed that executive ...

The Absorbent Mind, Chapter 19: The Child�s Contribution to Society � Normalization

The transition from one state to the other always follows a piece of work done by the hands with real things, work accompanied by mental con...

Montessori Parenting: Observing Sensitive Periods in Young Children

It was the children themselves who showed that they preferred one another�s company to dolls, and the small �real life� utensils to toys. �M...

Command Cards for Montessori Elementary Students

There are two main types of shelf work in the Montessori environment. The first is the Montessori materials themselves. The second consists ...

The Absorbent Mind, Chapter 18: Character and Its Defects in Childhood

It follows that the child�s character develops in accordance with the obstacles he has encountered or the freedom favoring his development t...

Increasing Montessori Enrollments with Online Marketing

As I was driving through my neighborhood this week, I noticed small signs scattered about town that advertised the local Montessori school. ...

The Absorbent Mind Chapter 17: Further Elaboration, Part 3 - The Mathematical Mind

The results we obtain with our little ones contrast oddly with the fact that mathematics is so often held to be a scourge rather than pleasu...

The Absorbent Mind, Chapter 17: Acquisition of Culture � Imagination

Is the child�s mental horizon limited to what he sees? No. He has a type of mind that goes beyond the concrete. He has the great power of im...