Art Shelf

This summer we embarked on a study of creativity.  Music, Art, Woodworking, Textiles, Photography & Scrapbooking, and Movement. 

After two weeks of exploring lines, dots, curves, shape, color, and a few select artists this is what the children offered up to each other to beautify our community. 

They especially enjoyed the smudging and blending of the oil pastels. 

 

There are days when I want to put a limit on the time they spend with art, but I see the joy and beauty that fills our environment.  They absolutely love framing their work and seeing it on display.   

changing to follow the child

As the beginning of this new schood year approaches I am charting the course of concepts to layout for the children. This is always an exciting time where I get to revisit old ways of presenting material and assess if there may be some fresh angles. Having just discovered how active the Montessori community is online, I feel the strength of the Movement behind me. Allow me an explaination...

Last fall I attended a Montessori conference called Following the Child into the 21 Century. I heard some outstanding speakers throughout the weekend! Reflecting over this past year I see how the conference set into motion a whole new open mindedness for my own journey in education. I have struggled with technology ever since elementary age when my father made the computer a household appliance back in the 80's. As I heard speaker after speaker reinforce the fundamental idea that we must follow the children into this age of change where technology, computers, and instant information; I began to accept that today's child is as familiar with this "stuff" as they are with the language that is spoken in their home. I began reflecting on Maria's writings of the amazing ability of a child to use his whole mind and each of his senses to aquire the ability to learn a language in such a short time. It hit me a few months later that if I was to continue my persuit of following the child I would have to learn this language of technology and embrace all that it has to offer. Beginning this blog is a huge step in learning many things!!

The conference hosted Dr. Steven Hughs, a child neuropsychologist who happens to be a Montessori dad. He spoke in detail about the way we Montessorians speak a different language that parents don't always connect with. So in my musings this summer about the Montessori method as Movement and how I would like to see this available to all children across the globe regardless of income in my life time I began to think about the new parents I will be recieving this fall. Parent Education has always been a challenge for our school. How do we get the parents to have the faith it takes to commit to Montessori as a way of life and not just a place to provide "early childhood development" until they can enter public school. I ran across a blog yesterday which lead me back to this book I picked up at the conference A Whole New Mind by Daniel H. Pink. I believe this is a key to getting our parents to see the big picture of the long term benefits of Montessori. Times are changing. The souls who pass through our primary classrooms will be the leaders of tomorrow and their future will not be one of number crunching and statistics. The independence of practical life, the problem solving, empathy, and humor of mixed-age community life, the design and creativity of manipulating the sensorial materials, the symphony of each area of the classroom being tied together by a beautiful golden thread woven by a brave woman willing to follow the child over 100 years ago is where our future lies!!! So it is my goal to sow some seeds this year and turn parents on to this book and get thier hands messy in the classroom so they can experience for them selves what happens when their child is allowed a sacred place for their spiritual embryo to develop.

"The fashioning of the human personality is a secret work of 'incarnation'. This child is an emigma. All that we know is that he has the highest potentialities, but we do not know what he will be. He must 'become incarnate' with the help of his own will." Maria Montessori-

Secret of Childhood



Just one more thing... today my husband was showing me a new application on his silly I-phone for a fraction, percentages, and decimals game. I have not mastered how to use my hands to make this device work as it should (talk about control of error!) and I have always struggled with numbers, so I was in a small state of frustration. He gave me another lesson on how to hold the phone, I took a deep breath and tried again. When I had to convert the fractions in relationship to percentages and decimals guess what popped in my minds eye......

the fraction insets! The sharp contrast of the red and green helped me to visualize what part of the whole I was working with. Even as an adult the hand helps the memory and the mind.

It's taken quite a bit of experimentation, but I am nearly ready to enter this world of blogging. I am eager to post photos, but still waiting to recieve permission from admin and parents to do so.

As soon as I do, I can show the excitment of our exploration into woodworking. We kept things pretty open ended as to what to create. We did demonstrate a few possibilities such as a geo board and name plaques, but other than that our focus has been on skills not product. So far we have an airplane, 2 bird houses and one bird condo! The younger children are naming the tools with pictures and objects (found in language) and sanding wood (located in practical life). The tools that are not in the object basket are being stored on a peg board near the back door. It has really helped to set the standard of respect for the tools to have a lesson on classification and naming first, so when a 3 year old comes up waving the coping saw or hammer saying, "I need to use this!" I can say, "Great! Let's have a lesson on the tools to get you ready." I feel very safe about using the coping saw, as we invest so much into care of self, others, the environment, and safety. We did have one little guy try to pound holes in the compost bag with the hammer instead of hammering a nail into the tree stump. He was not making much progress with the nail, so perhaps he thought he might with the bag of dirt!
In preperation for bringing this aspect of life skills and creativity I found a blog Wisdom of the Hands which holds the spirit of following the child and putting them in contact with means to do for themselves.
The process for the children is:
classifying tools
design a "blue print"
select the wood
construct it to see if will work
sand the peices
saw
glue
drill
hammer
paint
Lessons on sawing, hammering, and drilling are necessary along the way. Some of the children are sanding, hammering, sawing, and drilling for the purpose of acquiring the skill and have no end game in mind. They are extremely excited about this new aspect of the environment! It has taken 9 years to bring this to life in our classroom. Up till this summer we had hammering on the stump, plumber's pipes for gross motor development and imagination, nuts & bolts, and locks & keys.
My favorite aspect of this is how much the children are taking initiative in problem solving and what they are teaching me along the way. I know very little about working with wood and basically raided my husband's tool boxes (with permission of course) to launch this. We had been trying to solve a sawing problem using clamps and different thicknesses of wood in relation to the thinkness of the tables. I tried a few ideas using a variey of clamps with no sucess. I left the child to address something else in the classroom. When I returned, 10 minutes later, he had solved the problem using the materials at hand! I am grateful for the model set down by Montessori in guiding children to develop real life skills in sequence of necessity, followed by removal of the teacher. My mantra is often "to cast a ray of light and move on" so that I remember to keep my lessons simple, clean, and short. It is their work, not mine.... I am merely the observer, the gather of interests, and facilitator between the child and the environment.
Hopefully I will have pic's up soon.