April 28, 2007 7:32 AM
Montessori at home - A prepared environment
No mother has to experience the Terrible Twos. All it takes is understanding and practicing a few Montessori principles to help your child sail gracefully through what can really be a thoroughly delightful and productive stage.
My Montessori training took nine months of 9-5. I've written a book called The Mommy Manual which covers the basics for mommies. Plus two books called Mommy, Teach Me! and Mommy, Teach Me to Read! due out in June which go into more detail on expanding your child's Montessori experience. But if you're living with a toddler or two, you need help now -- in small, reader-friendly pieces. In the next few weeks, I'll be running a MommyLife series I did a couple years ago to give you some fresh ideas or remind you of what you already know. If you choose to try a few, please let me know the results.
The most important thing I learned as a Montessori teacher was to see the world through a child's eyes. I know that this revolutionized my motherhood. See, we're just too far removed from our own childhoods to remember how it was. We might remember specific events or even flashes of feeling -- but we just don't remember the helplessness and disconectedness that children experience because they are living in an environment built for people several times their size.
There's a Big Chair at a produce stand just over the mountain (a little Loudoun lingo for driving over the Blue Ridge into the neighboring county) from me:
(Picture by Maddy at Nall's Produce Stand, Clarke County, Virginia.)
Now, imagine trying to climb up and sit here, you feet dangling, all insecure. Imagine trying to get down.
You may see where I'm going with this. When we see the world through children's eyes, we have a little more compassion for the daily challenges they face. Yes, we might have bought them a child-sized table and chair
- and I hope you have so they have a place that fits to color and do puzzles. It's one of the reasons kids love to go to preschool -- because everything there fits them. But we can provide the same sense of belonging at home by rethinking our living spaces and making them more child-friendly.
Back when Samantha was little, children's furniture was hard to come by. These days it's everywhere, thanks to the influence of Montessori. My advice is to create little nooks here and there around the house for your child. Don't put your child's table and chair in her bedroom where it will collect dust -- put it out where she will be part of family life. Put a shelf next to it
with puzzles and manipulatives (sewing cards, pegboards, small blocks, etc). Show her how to take a puzzle off the shelf, set it on the table and do it (encourage repetition - then how to put it back before taking out something else.
You can find lots of ideas under Barbara's Picks in the top left sidebar. Click on Early Education and Kid-Friendly Environment for ideas. The idea isn't to get you to buy stuff - although if you do buy at Amazon when clicking through from this site, a small percentage comes back - but to give you some ideas of how to create a richer, more friendly environment for your child - to help your children reach their potential by providing for their developmental needs. I think you'll find the results will be more joy in your child, in you, in your home.
Once you understand what to look for, you can better evaluate things you come across at garage sales and second hand stores - to pass by the junk and to make the most of the good stuff.
In later posts, I'll be speaking of how this simple change in your child's experience will lead to independence (the good kind), concentration, a sense of order, and a love of learning. In the meantime, we'll just think of it here as creating a child-friendly environment.
The second most helpful thing you can do is to provide step-stools for your child in strategic places so he can develop a larger vision.
If you can imagine being three feet tall and wandering through the kitchen, you'll see how very limited the environment is for kids (although I do hope you let them play with the tupperware and pots and pans in the lower cabinets -- c'mon, life's too short to worry about having the neatest kitchen in the world -- before you know it your kids will be grown and gone and are they gonna think you're a better mom because the kitchen was spotless?)
Standing on a stool in the kitchen gives your child the opportunity to see what you're doing. Not only is it good for companionship, but it will surely spark an interest in helping -- something you want to nurture. It is possible to teach a two year old to peel carrots, for example. I'll be showing you how in posts to come.
Put a peg rack at kids' level by the door so your child can get his own coat and hang it up when he comes in. Again, this isn't just child-friendly, but providing opportunities for independence.
Create a reading nook with a beanbag or cozy little chair next to a shelf of his own books (more later on encouraging reading).
Here is one sent in by a mom who read my first books Small Beginnings and Ready, Set, Read! (which have now been expanded and will come out with the new titles in June) ten years ago and has been putting everything into practice:
Finally, I frame cards or small prints of classical paintings and hang them at kids' eye level throughout the house (another Montessori-inspired idea). By the reading nook, pictures like Fragonard's Girl Reading:
By the coat rack, pictures of outdoor scenes like Renoir's Girl with a Watering Can:
Scattered throughout the house, pictures like Homer's Snap the Whip:
and Van Gogh's Starry Night:
. . . anything that you - now looking through the eyes of a child - find appealing. You can find these in greeting card racks, boxed note card sets, or a book of cards which is part of a total art program for kids - Mommy, It's a Renoir!
Oh, and place a few mirrors here and there at their height so they can see themselves:
More reasons why a mirror at their level is a good idea at Kid-friendly home decor.
Lastly, rethink everything in your child's daily life. Make sure he has access to the things he needs -- that he can get out his own clothes, for instance -- wherever possible so that he doesn't have to be dependent on you. Remember, parenting is one job you should be working yourself out of -- to finally produce young men and women who can stand on their own two feet.
For more depth, please read The Mommy Manual - available through Amazon or hopefully, your local library. Also, look for my new books in June. But I will be running a series of Montessori at home in the weeks to come, interspersed with my thoughts on whatever grabs my attention each day. Enjoy yourself as you begin to implement whatever changes resonate with you.
And be sure to let me know how it goes!
Posted in Homeschooling, Montessori, Mothering, Preschoolers, Toddlers | Permalink
Comments
Bless you Barbara! I need this right now!!!!! I am losing my mind with my 3 y/o...I won't even begin to bore you with our struggles, but just know that i'm looking forward to your posts.
I have the Mommy Manual on my bookshelf but haven't finished reading it--I might just do that today!!
Posted by: millicent | April 28, 2007 9:32 AM
What I'm still stuck on is how to provide for independence for a very slightly older child without providing too much for a younger child to get into. How do you have chairs and stools out if you have a climbing one-year-old who's likely to climb onto the toilet? How do you set activities out accessibly without them becoming a free-for-all the second your back is turned? I'm trying to teach good habits, but I can't be on top of them every second.
Posted by: Queen of Carrots | April 28, 2007 11:31 AM
Hi QofC -
I know you asked about the son who wouldn't move more thoughtfully and I didn't have time to answer that. So let me give this a try.
It kind of refers back to the comment I just made about ideals. What I'm doing here is presenting something to work toward. Some people - like the mom of the little girl in the reading nook - will have children who are naturally inclined to go with the program.
Some will have kids who are more rambunctious. There are a couple things to bablnce here: One is training a child what is off limits. But another is being flexible enough to tweak a plan to fit the needs of the family at any given time.
My daughter Samantha, who had five kids in eight years never left the Montessori exercises she pout together out on shelves for the same reason you can't. Instead, she had them ready on a closet shelf and she brought them out one at a time. That's fine.
The reason you want to work toward everything being available for the child to choose is that choosing within a structured environment is a healthy way to meet the independence needs of the child. Even if you can't have everything available, you can offer a choice when you want him to settle down: Would you like to work with a puzzle or blocks?
You can structure some time for table work. Use a timer and give your child a choice of activities. Then he should sit at the table and do that for five minutes. At the end of five minutes, you can ask him if he'd like to spend five minutes more at that activity or choose something else.
The goal would be to increase his ability to focus on one task for as long as possible.
TV and videos really seem to decrease children's ability to concentrate (on anything other than the screen), so I would recommend eliminating those as much as possible. I'll be running more on developing concentration soon.
Yes, it takes a lot of time to train a child, but once he is trained, you will be very graeful to see the results!
And just remember that God didn't make us from cookie cutters, so your child may never seem to fit the template at all. That's okay - and when he's grown up and God's plan is revealed, you may see how it all fit in to shape the person he will be.
Posted by: barbara | April 28, 2007 12:30 PM
I have done most of the things you suggest in this post. My kids love it! I, too, struggle with having a 17-month-old who climbs on every stool and every chair. We have had to put away our big step stool for the time being, but we still bring it out for certain activities (and the baby goes in the highchair so he's not left out) and we have a small one the kids can use that doesn't allow the toddler full access to the counters. :) I'm still working on re-organizing the kitchen to make it even more child-usable than it is (the toddler is allowed in almost every cabinet except the ones that are latched).
One thing we do is that even though my kids have a playroom (it was originally the formal dining room), we also keep baby toys in the family room, which is our main hang-out spot. We have a bar-type built-in, but there's way more space than we need for our few wine glasses. So one cupboard is baby toys (the older kids are expected to simply carry their toys from one room to another and then back again!). We have lots of bookcases and we've trained the toddler to leave them alone, since mistreating books is not allowed in our home.
My older kids are 5 and 3, btw. I loved The Mommy Manual, I have Small Beginnings and I can't wait for the new books to come out! Even though I was already doing some of these things, the books have influenced my parenting attitude quite a bit! Thank you!
Posted by: Lucy | April 28, 2007 3:38 PM
We have always had the Fragonard in our schoolroom, and used "Mommy, It's a Renoir"!
I'm happy to discover I'm a natural Montessori mom!
Posted by: Leticia | April 29, 2007 7:15 PM
OK, I'm relieved to know your daughter didn't leave her manipulatives out. Now I feel more legitimate about having them in the china cabinet, I can actually think about how to use them in a more productive way (rather than them strewing them across the floor while I'm washing dishes!)
I don't think I was the one who asked about concentration, although it's useful information anyway. We don't have any video or tv here~but sometimes we have an overload of toddler silliness!
Posted by: Queen of Carrots | May 1, 2007 9:08 PM
i have the mommy manual book and i'm halfway through it. i love it. I am going to love your posts that are coming up. i just want to thank you so much!
Posted by: allena | May 1, 2007 10:15 PM
