New Addition to the Montessori Info Sidebar

Xia at Grillos y Canarios recently posted about these videos. Tami Elliot of Northstar Montessori Preschool visually demonstrates how to present various Montessori activities, and I have literally just spent the past couple of hours going though her videos - they are a wonderful resource for Montessori homeschoolers (thanks!). I've added a link to Tami's videos in the Montessori Resources sidebar on the left.

The Best Online Montessori Album

I mentioned this website in an earlier post, and I have it listed on my Montessori Info sidebar to the left, but I just wanted to take a second to point out what I consider to be the best online Montessori album: The AMI Primary Guide. It's extremely comprehensive, it includes some photos and diagrams, and it is an incredible resource for Montessori homeschoolers.

For some reason (maybe because it's called a "guide" instead of an "album"), even after hours of online research, I had a lot of trouble finding this site (in fact, I never did find it - my husband did!). I don't see it listed on many other bloggers' websites, so I thought I would draw your attention to it in case you weren't aware of it.

How We Will Structure Our Days

Here is a quick overview of how we plan to schedule our days:

9:00 - Hang up coat, take off shoes/put on slippers, Purell/wash hands

9:05 – Circle Time (Parent-led): Say Pledge of Allegiance, sing National Anthem, sing 2-3 educational songs, review day/month/season/calendar, intentional Circle Time activity, pray

9:30 – Independent Work

10:00 - Snack is available

11:00 – Enrichment: On Mondays we will do an Arts & Crafts project; on Tuesdays, we will have a Music activity; on Wednesdays, we will have PE

11:30 – Clean-up and Jobs (feeding fish, sweeping, pushing a carpet sweeper on rug, etc.)

11:45 – Circle Time (Parent-led): Bible story/verse, Bible song

12:00 – School day ends

I'd love to hear any comments you might have!

How Our Preschool Is Going to Work

Here's how we've decided to set things up:

For starters, in addition to the two mothers I initially called, I spoke to one other mom who is a web developer, and she too joined in. With school set to start next Tuesday, Sept. 2, this is what we look like:

One 4-year-old boy [Band teacher's son]
One almost-4-year-old girl [My daughter]
One 3-year-old girl [Kindergarten teacher's daughter]
One just-turned-3-year old boy [Web developer's son]
One 2-year-old girl [Band teacher's daughter]
One almost-2-year-old girl [My daughter]
One 1-year-old boy [Web developer's son]
One 7-month-old girl [Kindergarten teacher's daughter]
One 5-month-old girl [My daughter]
One on the way! [Band teacher's son or daughter, due Feb. 2009]

The students will be split up into two areas: A Montessori area for the three- and four-year-olds, and a play area for the younger kids.

The former-kindergarten-teacher mother will lead Circle Time every day and Arts & Crafts one day a week, the former-band-teacher mother will lead Music one day a week and PE one day a week, I will lead Montessori time, and the web-developer mother will assist on the Montessori side.

I will describe how we plan to structure our days in a future post.

Our Montessori Backstory, Part Three (Conclusion)

And finally, the thrilling conclusion of our continuing series...(In case you missed them, here are Part One and Part Two.)

"How hard could it be..."

Those words were ringing in my ears..."How hard could it be?"

Well, HARD! First of all, although Montessori is not trademark-able and any school can call itself a Montessori school, finding information on how to teach (i.e., "present") the materials was not easy! I read many books, including Elizabeth Hainstock's Teaching Montessori in the Home: The Preschool Years and The School Years and David Gettman's Basic Montessori. The Hainstock books were good - I came away from them thinking, "I can do this - no sweat," but the Gettman book was enough to have me breathing out of a brown paper bag again.

And although those books were a good starting point, I had more materials than I had information for. After searching and searching online for and through Montessori teaching "albums," as they're called, I finally called in the cavalry: my husband. He is a researcher-extraordinaire, and (literally) within 15 seconds, he had found this site. Now we were getting somewhere!

I created my own Montessori teaching albums, and then I started freaking out again. Every night I would sit down with my albums and my materials and practice presenting them, and then the room would start spinning (My husband has been very supportive through all of this - there has been MUCH hand-holding). Montessori materials, although deceptively simple-looking at first, are layers and layers deep (Maria Montessori was a genius - she's totally on my list of three people living or dead that I would invite to dinner). Everything builds on everything else, and I felt really overwhelmed with the order in which I was to present everything (our preschool will have different students at different ages and different stages of development - more on that in a future post).

Fortunately, I also had discovered a wonderful Montessori blogging community that reaches out and tries to demystify Maria Montessori's methods somewhat (thank you!). I came across this post, and it was the Aha! moment I needed. Stephanie over at Montessori Free Fall mentioned that, "Math activities shouldn't be introduced until period three..." Period three, period three...what was she talking about and how did she know that!!? I delved deeper into her blog, and - OF COURSE! - it was the Gettman book! That dreadful book that had me breaking out in hives had an overview of the order in which to present everything!! I had read that at some point and then completely forgotten about it! Once I had the materials, the album, and the order, I started to calm down. A little bit.

Finally, I started thinking about it like this: It's just preschool. I mean, seriously, if we start this preschool and it's a complete failure, then I've failed - at preschool. Many kids don't even go to preschool! So although I completely respect and admire Maria Montessori and want to honor the brilliance of her teaching methods, I'm going to try to relax a little and know in my heart that our students will come away from this effort knowing a lot more than they did going in.

School starts a week from tomorrow, and I'm thrilled, nervous, terrified, and every emotion imaginable. I hope you'll stay tuned to see how the story unfolds!