Overheard this morning in my kitchen:
Phoebe: I’m doomed.
A minute later: What does doomed mean?
Eliza: It means you’re really tired.
Feel ya girls. Getting back into our normal routine after last week’s winter break has been rough. Yesterday morning, though, we were excited to get to school because it was “work share day,” when parents go into the classroom and children get to show what they’ve been working on.
In Montessori school, instead of having toys, they have “work.” I’ve heard Waldorf people accuse this of being pretentious. The tension between Waldorf fundamentalists and Montessori folks is real! But Maria Montessori, the German frau who founded this school, believed that children should be honored for the effort, time, and creativity they put into learning and growing — the work.
Whatever the lexicon, I am a huge fan and advocate of Montessori after witnessing my daughters thrive at a Montessori preschool, or Children’s House, for the past few years. Within the Montessori classroom, there’s an abundance of beautiful, tactile materials and natural light.
The basic premise of Montessori education is that children learn best through purposeful activities that they get to choose. When they arrive in the classroom, they start the day with a circle round, but after that, they each decide what they want to focus on without a lot of direction from teachers. Rather than giving front-of-the-classroom lessons all day long, teachers revolve around the class helping children with individual activities and giving one-on-one lessons, which are largely demonstrative instead of verbal.
The classroom is sectioned off into theme-based areas that lay the foundation for things like reading, math, sciences, art, and practical life. There’s typically a library of thoughtfully curated books, and this morning, I read one to Phoebe about a little black girl who was determined to play Peter Pan in her school play. Awareness of anti-bias education is huge in our school, and for that I feel very grateful. There are also rotating seasonal works, such as the maple sugaring works Eliza showed me today. (Yes, we are in Vermont.)
Every time I am invited into their classroom during work share day, I get excited to see what they’re choosing to work on. And even though they are in separate classrooms, with gobs of works to choose from, they almost always turn out to be working on the same thing. Yesterday, it was the hundred board.
The hundred board is a magnetic board where you lay down all the numbers from 1 to 100. It’s designed to teach and test children’s ability to count to 100. It also has some pretty nifty education built into it beyond this simple task. Because of the way it’s laid out, it teaches kids how to count in tens and notice other patterns in this group of numbers.
My daughters are really into patterns, so I assume that is the impetus behind their choice to work on the hundred board. But I find it so fascinating how alike identical twins can be. It wasn’t just their choice of work. It was the way they responded to me being in the classroom — with subtle pride tinged with excitement — and how they both knocked over a pouring work while over eager to demonstrate it to me. How they both clamored to put their work away in the most tidy way. How they held my hand tightly and dragged me around the room shyly.
I often find myself envious of my daughters’ Montessori education. I definitely don’t think Montessori is for everyone. But it is ideal for my kids and a lot of other kids I know, and I genuinely think the public school system could learn a lot from this approach to trusting kids instincts and empowering them to learn how to learn.
What I’m reading:
Just finishing up Washington Black by Esi Edugyan. This book was so mesmerizing and well-written. Definitely going on my list of all-time favorite books.
I just did myself a favor and unsubscribed from the foodie newsletter that sends me headlines daily like “10 things in your kitchen that are slowly killing you.” It’s like the Fox News of foodie blogs, and I don’t need that in my life. I am fear-based enough as it is. I try to stay informed while avoiding fear-mongering news, which is really tricky in these days of coronavirus and the presidential election.
What I’m watching:
The last few Democratic debates, which were nerve racking.
The original Wizard of Oz with my daughters. What a world, what a world!
What I’m eating:
I splurged on a new cookbook, Whole Food Cooking Every Day: Transform the Way You Eat with 250 Vegetarian Recipes Free of Gluten, Dairy, and Refined Sugar — the cookbook name with the longest string of keywords of all time. I have been making some really groovy things, like these GF muffins with raspberries and pepitas sprinkled on top:
What I’m working on:
For Jones + Waddell: The 3-Headed Cerberus of Digital Ads: Bots, Viewability Standards, and Ad Blockers
