I've mentioned before that Katie's going to a Montessori school and until a year ago I would have had only a vague idea of what that even means so an explanation of sorts is in order.
Basically a Montessori school is a happy hybrid of a one-room school house and individual tutoring--the two furthest extremes of education blended into a classroom. Katie is in a classroom with 24 other kids ranging from ages three to six. Montessori education is child-led and actually does better with large classrooms and high student-teacher ratios. The next "grade" has six to nine year olds, then nine through twelve year olds. There are two teachers in the room and they essentially have a notebook of what each student has accomplished so far, where they are in skill development, and what they are ready for next. When a teacher is ready to give a specific lesson they pull two to three kids together to demonstrate how to use the materials appropriately. Those kids may be of various ages but are all at a similar development level in that topic. Anyone that has spent time with kids knows that not all kids are at the same level based on age, so this lets kids work at levels that are appropriate to them, not just what their age dictates for them. One-room schoolhouse meets individual education plans.
The room is packed with activities which are designed to promote learning of basic math concepts, science ideas, letter sounds, fine-motor skills, and more; usually multi-conceptual so for example they're learning math, music, and science while working with the music bells and ordering them by pitch. Once a kid has a lesson on a topic they are welcome to go back to it often and can decide what they want to do each day. The kids spend relatively little time being taught directly--most of their time is spent in individual work which is very educational and productive. The kids are responsible for their classroom and themselves. When they want a snack they access the cleaning basket and wipe off a table, access the snack area and prepare a plate with the snack items, eat, clean up their area, wash the dishes, and place them in a drying rack. They make their own tea, serve snacks to each other, and generally are self-sufficient. If something is spilled or broken, they put out a safety cone, get the child-sized broom and dustpan, and clean it up. They take pride in their classroom and are allowed to clean the windows, feed the fish (one child per day), tidy up the craft areas, polish the wooden and glass items...whatever they want to do. There is a garden and--if no one else already has it--they can get the Garden Necklace, find their nametag and put it in the "out in the garden" slot, change into outdoor shoes and coats, and go outside to tend the garden.
The first few weeks of school Katie was fixated on getting the Easel Painting lesson but she had to wait for the official lesson on the proper way to set up, use, and clean up that space. Finally, in her 3rd week she came home and celebrated her lesson in Easel Painting. Then she became obsessed with getting her lesson in Gardening. Everyday we talk about her latest lessons and she would ask us when we thought she might get this or that and most importantly Gardening.
Gardening in September and October meant tending to the tomato and sunflower plants, picking tomatoes, weeding, and watering. Katie watched with painful curiosity as more senior kids went about the business. It's now quiet barren out there, but finally--finally!!--Katie got her gardening lesson on Monday. She uses giant tweezers/tongs to pluck seedpods from a bush and stores them in a special box for planting next spring. As the winter comes they will be allowed to go out and shovel and do other activities, leading up to spring and early summer planting.
She adores the school and it's a perfect fit for her. She can follow her own pace and curiosity--none of the traditional "time to put away the reading books so we can all do math" group learning. And lessons are highly interconnected--one of my pet peeves with my college students is the way they assume being in my class means they do not have to think about how other courses relate to our topics or that they're "done" thinking of something once that class is over. Or that if it's not on the test it's not worth learning. They have no grades or tests or homework and yet nearly all the kids go on to top high schools and then to top colleges. Learning for the love of learning.
We had her first parent teacher conference last week and the teachers had all good things to say about her adjustment to the classroom. I'm glad we didn't start at three as most of the students do and that we're only doing 1/2 day right now when most of the 4's are at full day, but I think this right now is exactly what she needed at this age. Quite frankly we were running out of personal resources to keep up with her constant thirst for information, lessons, structure, responsibilities, and projects.
We're not sure right now if this will be an equally good fit for Jorge. His personality and learning style are very different from Katie's and that may make his ideal school environment different than hers. On the other hand, we will probably keep him home until he's 4 as well, so we have nearly 2 full years to see how his patience and self-control develop. For now, Katie's blossoming every day at her school and is eager to go; and Jorge is really blossoming under Rob's individual attention each morning. In the last month Jorge has found the joy in sitting and working a 24 piece puzzle for ten or more minutes--something he would dismiss within a minute last summer--and has progressed to more complicated building and intricate designs with his train set and Legos. And his language usage has burst from short sentences to run-on paragraphs (much like this one). We're constantly amused by his long speeches that end with "wouldn't that be a good idea!?" or "and I was so super thirsty/hungry/tired/fast". Both kids are curious, imaginative, and painfully good at remembering every last detail so we're just trying to keep up.
