HappyMama

Here’s an example of a Yahoo group where you “donate” $30 for 4 months of downloads from the albums of an experienced Montessori teacher. Albums are books/binders full of descriptions of all the presentations a Montessori teacher would use in the school room. The language album I have is full of pre-reading & writing activities, learning to read, write, and spell activities, plus dozens of grammar lessons. I’ve been doing the pre-reading activities with our 2-year-old, and the grammar activites with my 4-year-old. We both really enjoy them.

I’ve added a new category to my sidebar - Montessori & Catechesis of the Good Shepherd Materials. Today I’ll add a few pics of a simple grammar presentation: introduction to singular vs. plural. In a traditional classroom, such a lesson would begin with a lecture by the teacher, while the kiddos sit in their desks trying to pay attention. A Montessori lesson would work like this:

1. Teacher chooses a time when child is peaceful & alert, and the environment is peaceful. [In our home, we do new presentations when at least one younger child is sleeping and the other younger child is preoccupied.] Teacher asks child if he would like to see something new. [Answer has never been No!]

2. Teacher leads child to a container/tray/drawer containing the new materials and wordlessly demonstrates how to carry them to a workspace. This could be a desk or a rug on the floor, wherever the child chooses. Teacher opens the container and takes out two large labels and reads them to the child while pointing to the words: “singular”, “plural”, and lays them out at the top of a workspace. [Working on a mat is a highly effective way of improving concentration by clearly defining where the child's materials, hands, and eyes should be.]

3. One object & label at a time, teacher sets out all of the materials, reading the labels as they are placed (or having the child read them if they want to), then carefully and gently puts everything away back on the shelf. The child is now free to do this work by himself, whenever he chooses. Without fail, he will want to do it immediately, and then will return to the work some other day. The teacher can present the material a second time after a few days or weeks if she thinks it would be of benefit to the child.

Notice that the teacher never explains anything to the child. The child discovers for himself what the two new words mean. He discovers for himself that by adding an “s” to a word it signifies more than one of the object. While at first this may not seem important, it is because when we discover something all on our own, there’s an Aha! moment that occurs in our brain, and the impression of the moment in our memory is more intense and lasting. It would be easy for me to sit down with a child, a piece of paper, and a pencil, and do this lesson with him in the “traditional” way of simply telling him the grammatical rules. And if he was in a good mood, he’d sit there obediently and nod his head yes, and he’d be able to rattle back to me what he had learned. But would it stick with him? The Montessori materials do.