Independence

"These words reveal the child's inner needs:  

'Help me to do it alone.'"                                   

Maria Montessori

Few things are more important to your children than independence.  In the quote above, Dr. Montessori's words were translated from the Italian as, "Help me to do it alone."  Closer to her intent might be the phrase we hear children say all the time, "I want to do it all by myself!"  or "I did it!" - neither of which necessarily means alone.  Here at Chickadee, we encourage children to expand their abilities to work independently, to develop their skills and self-sufficiency, and to succeed at new tasks.  We think through the details and plan ahead.  We start with the simplest needs - hanging up a coat, for instance - then expand into all of practical life.   We set up the whole environment and curriculum to foster independence. Deep intention guides this commitment, because it is so good for children.  

Cara is cutting potatoes for last week's roasted potato lunch dish.  She has had many experiences with knives by now, starting with cutting soft bananas, on to cheese, finally to celery, carrots, and potatoes.  This paring knife is sharp for a child (though any good cook would find it dull).  She has been shown how to keep her non-dominant hand above the blade.  She is absorbed in doing this independent, careful, and meaningful work.  Not every child will be allowed to use the paring knife, by the way - he needs to do the preparatory work first and to demonstrate carefulness.  And with knives, an unobtrusive but watchful teacher is always near at hand.   Also near at hand are other children who are watching her work, impressed, and waiting their turn. 

Independence builds confidence and a sense of empowerment in the child.  It leads her forward joyfully to the next challenge, the next interest, the next learning, whatever it may be.  Her absorbent mind is creating networked, neural synapses of success and strength, connecting left and right brain, and linking her will and her actions, in ways that neuroscience is only beginning to understand.  

In Montessori we focus on supporting that independence because we know we are helping the child's brain and character to grow in optimal ways.  Here are just three out of a multitude of examples....

Megan is sewing a button onto fabric.  She is using a sharp needle, learning to go up and down and not around the hoop, getting that button attached all by herself.   Independence!  What came home to her parents was just a bit of fabric with a button sewed into it.  What could they not see but only guess at? Concentration, confidence, completion of a cycle of activity, pride -  all were integral in such a small package of independent work. Each button matters! 

Leo is filling the land forms with water, a work he did repeatedly this fall.  He poured them ever so carefully, filling each one until it reached a perfect level of water tension, with not a drop spilled, not a drop overflowing.  Behind this focused work were many experiences with basic pouring activities in all their variations, from pouring big white beans to pouring water into tiny cups.  He can now pour independently and successfully in any context - he pours his own water for drinking, he pours his own milk at lunch, he serves juice to friends.  He is skillful and confident.  He is functionally independent.

Terra is our oldest this year, and the only one here with 3+ years of Montessori under her belt.  So when she got paint on a favorite flowered dress last month, she dealt with it.  She went to her extra clothes box and changed into another top.  Then she got out the cloth-washing work, complete with a real scrub board.  She mixed up some soapy water with grated soap, and then proceeded to scrub the paint out of that flowered dress.  She scrubbed and scrubbed until the paint spots were all gone.  Then she rinsed it thoroughly and hung it to dry.

The benefits of such independent work cannot be overemphasized.  Sure, she could have thrown it in our washing machine, or more likely, she could have given it to her mom to throw in the washer.  But instead, she took care of it herself, step by step, fully engaged, self-sufficient, and ultimately satisfied at a job well done.

Yes, the benefits of independence are far-reaching.  And it's not just for a Montessori environment.  An increasing level of independence is a core need for every child in every part of his life, from babyhood on - it's a part of every child's innate drive to "create himself."   It was Wordsworth who said, "The child is the father of the man," but it could have been Montessori.  

Your child is inevitably dependent on you, his parents, for all his big needs, for a very long time.  But through these first, critical years of parenthood and childhood, you can set up your home life so that he or she grows in independence in the daily tasks of life, month by month, year by year.  Yes, it takes lots of patience and a willingness to shift priorities, but it is totally worthwhile. "Help me to do it all by myself" - may these words become a guiding principle in your daily life with your children at home.

Independence!   Here's a visual affirmation - Morgan, exuberantly expressing 

 "I did it!"

  

Weaving the web

No single experience has given me more pleasure these last weeks than reading Charlotte's Web out loud to the whole group.  After many readings through my years with children, it remains for me the perfect first chapter book.   Charlotte and Wilbur never fail to weave a spell of pleasure, discovery, and joy in the hearts of the children who are listening.  And the book never fails to move me too, with its language, its subtleties, and its depth of feeling.

Tomorrow we will read "The Last Day," at the end of which Charlotte dies.   The rumors have been floating, because a couple kids have apparently seen a movie version (I have sworn them to silence.)   We will share the sadness of this part of the story together.  Two or three more days, and the last page will be finished, the book closed, the circle of life celebrated as Charlotte's baby spiders take off on a warm wind.

I wish you could see your children's faces as I read to them.  In the past I have read this book to 5- and 6-year-olds; here in our group, only the two youngest tend to drift away.  They sit rapt on our "story rug" (the carpet next to the sensorial shelves).   Their eyes are watching me, they rarely move, and I know that inside, they are conjuring the story's images for themselves; they are soaking up the language and the feelings.  The chapters are just right in length - sometimes we read just half a chapter, sometimes we skip a day.  The vocabulary is rich and interesting (thank you, Charlotte, who is among other things quite literate!)  There are only the occasional, classic Garth Williams line drawings to stimulate their visual imagination.  Every day we talk about what happened the day before.  Today we laughed and laughed at the funny happenings at the Fair. Sometimes I re-read parts, or a whole chapter to a child who missed it.  It's part of our breathing in and breathing out, for a few more days.

What is its magic?    Here is what Eudora Welty wrote about Charlotte's Web: "What the book is about is friendship on earth, affection and protection, adventure and miracle, life and death, trust and treachery, pleasure and pain, and the passing of time.  As a piece of work it is just about perfect, and just about magical in the way it is done."  All of this in a children's book.  All of this and more.

What is its magic?  Perhaps at its core it's friendship, which dwells at the heart of your children's daily lives.  Tomorrow, and forever, Charlotte will say to Wilbur, in her last hours of life, "You have been my friend.  That in itself is a tremendous thing."

Story pages

"It is well to cultivate a friendly feeling towards error, 

to treat it as a companion inseparable from our lives..."

Maria Montessori

Our classroom holds a multitude of activities which begin to build a child's ability to write and read.  Many are on the three "language" shelves, which hold a long sequence from "I spy" games to the sandpaper letters to the movable alphabets to the farm.  But language is everywhere, and we have so many ways to build vocabulary, to practice pencil grip, or to draw a child's attention to letters, words, or ideas, as their shared lives unfold in our rich environment.

Of course learning the alphabet is critical.  The sandpaper letters organized into "sound boxes" are at the core of our multi-sensory approach (multi-sensory because they use sight, sound, and touch).  Most children spend a long time working with them, in a sequence or in some more mysterious order; a few have already learned the letters at home; some learn, forget, and learn again; and occasionally a child will teach himself to read almost spontaneously, skipping our nice, organized Montessori steps (I have seen that in the past, not yet at Chickadee.)

When a child knows most of the sound/symbol correspondence of the alphabet, he begins a long practice period with the movable alphabet and phonetic words. Every child starts this work at his own time, and at his own pace.  Most become quite engaged when they are four, and their work building these basic skills will continue through until they are five and six.  Often parents don't see these activities, because they can usually spell words with the movable alphabet before they can write them down with paper and pencil.

Here is just one of a multitude of examples, June Marie working recently on spelling the names of some farm animals.  Notice that she had 'y' mixed up with 'h.'  She caught the out-of-order"cta" before she finished.  I didn't correct or show her the silent 'e' in 'goose.'  Montessorians rarely correct work like this - we make a note, we find ways to circle back to a detail, we give a repeat lesson later (which I did regarding the 'h'), we encourage repetition.  Learning to read and write is like learning to speak, lots and lots of imperfect practice, and we always encourage and support the process.

Individual literacy trajectories are unique, and the children's "explosions into writing," as Dr Montessori called them, are always a joy, and often a surprise.  How wonderful and empowering it is when a child realizes that he can express himself in writing!

One way I have always encouraged this free expression is with the "story folders." These are three-hole colored folders which the children keep here all year, using paper with room for a picture on top and up to three lines of words on the bottom. Getting a "story folder" is a special event, and right now five of our kids have them, with more just around the corner.  In this work, the children draw a picture, write what they can, first with the movable alphabet, and then on the paper, and we NEVER correct them (sometimes I write very tiny in the bottom corner what the words say, if we might not remember later!)  Here are three examples:

Cooper has such a passion for vehicles, and he was so excited to get a story folder.  On this page he drew an ambulance, and then found "a m s" in the movable alphabet - the three sounds he heard and knew as he said this long word slowly to himself.  I dotted the letters for him on the paper, at his request.  On other pages he has done a "truc," a "monstr troz" (monster truck), a "pEnd" (panda), and his first sentence, "trans go fast."

By saving these papers all together in a folder, we can see their progress through the months, and they can look back at their own work.

June Marie did this one, a princess.  She wrote "p r i s s."  She had clearly seen the word, and remembered those two 's's at the end, as she laid it out with the movable alphabet.  Isn't this drawing a wonderful princess?  

On her latest pages, she's been drawing groups of friends, with some of their names.  One says "TARA CARA JUNE TREVOR."   We have some interesting examples of our inconsistent language in their names, like Terra and Cara.  They rhyme, but they are spelled differently (which June Marie hasn't noticed yet.)

Or the 'c' and 'k.'  We have Konrad and Kai for 'k,' and Cooper and Cara for 'c.'  So when the older kids are spelling a word with that sound, they have already learned to ask, "Is it the Cara 'c' or the Kai 'k'?"  It's actually very handy!

Finally, here is a page Terra did after a week-end at the beach.  "betifl sand BeTifl sea."  This is a good example of the way that they might intermix capital and lower case letters.  We always teach lower case, the movable alphabets are lower case, and we hope that you will use lower case at home, but so many early books and media use cap's.   Soon enough, the kids spontaneously transpose them in their heads.  In the case of 'b' for her beautiful 'betifl,' Terra knew both, and used one each time, without even noticing.   For 'sea,' she asked me, and I showed her that one way we spell the long 'e' sound is 'ea.'

I keep thinking of the adult book called Writing Down the Bones. This work is the children first writing down their bones, the memories and stories and moments that are important to them in their young and precious lives, day by day. 

Sunflowers

“Never underestimate the creative intelligence of a child.” 

 Maria Montessori

What better place to start than with sunflowers?  They've been a perfect way for us to say good-bye to summer and hello to fall.  As I write this in mid-October, just one sunflower remains in our raised beds, with its last flowers fading.  We’ll leave it out there for the yellow finches and bluejays to find – they had already been pecking away at the earliest seed heads, which are now being shared with chickens, chickadees, and chickarees, and a few are drying on our windowsill, to put out during the winter.    

A multi-layered story unfolded around these sunflowers through the months.... 

The children planted them in late spring, in little pots out back.  They marveled when they sprouted and began to develop leaves.  We had out all the botany materials at that time, learning about pistils and stamens, pollination and chlorophyl; we  sprouted seeds indoors in jars and on plates, so we could see the process.  When we transplanted them out to our new raised beds at the beginning of June, it was hard to imagine what they would become!  At that point I also lost track of which plants were whose, but fortunately, no one cared. 


Through the summer we watched them grow tall and strong - they were even taller than usual because of the raised beds.  As the children played in the sunshine, I would remind them to look way up; we compared them one to another; and sometimes I lifted the children up high on my shoulders to see the flowers up close.

As September began we had three kinds of sunflowers blooming. This one was some kind of mutant, with petals in the middle, interesting for all of us, and something I had never seen.

During the summer we often sang this song, and acted out growing like a sunflower, from a sprouting seed, rising up from the earth, until the children were tall and straight with circled arms overhead.  Music and even the simplest songs are a deeply satisfying way to express and honor the children's impressions, learning, and experiences.

Sunflower sunflower yellow and round,

You are the prettiest flower I've found.

Tall, straight, full of grace,

I love the light in your bright yellow face.

The tall teddy bear sunflowers had multiple blooms, so in September we could lift the kids up to cut stems for big bouquets inside.  And then, at the perfect moment, I came across a wonderful book called “Camille and the Sunflowers” - a true story about Vincent Van Gogh, and a little boy and his father who knew him in the village where he  painted his sunflowers.  

So we began this year's art experiences with the children painting their own sunflowers.    Remember the quote that began this post?  "Never underestimate the creative intelligence of a child." Think of it!  While the children painted, they were connecting with their memory of those sunflowers, from their planting and growing to our singing and reading books.  They were looking at the vase of flowers and thinking of another artist named Vincent who painted sunflowers.   They were exploring the wonder of color and the freedom of artistic expression.


At the end of this sunflower cycle (although there never are "ends" to nature's cycles, are there?) you found a folded painting in your child's take-home folder, a painting that may or may not resemble sunflowers.  Did you guess at the richness of experience that led up to that paint on that paper?   Does it help to read about it here?   I remind you as I remind myself:  the child's creative, amazing intelligence is active, expressing itself in unique and multiple ways, learning and growing, All The Time!