The Montessori Way

Snapshot Gardening doesn't have to end when the weather turns cold. A sunny windowsill, a few pots, and some seeds can give children months of meaningful work. An indoor garden offers something screens and toys cannot: a living thing that changes slowly and needs real...

  Snapshot How does a child get from counting three crackers at snack time to working with multiplication, fractions, geometry, and eventually algebra? In Montessori, mathematics is a carefully constructed journey. Children begin with quantities they can see and...

  Children choose purposeful work in a prepared Montessori environment. Isn't Montessori elitist? Montessori is an educational philosophy and approach that can be found in all sorts of settings, from the most humble to large, well equipped campuses. In general,...

Montessori teachers are trained to observe. We notice the three-year-old who has suddenly begun settling into long periods of concentration. We see the five-year-old who is quietly becoming a leader in the classroom. We recognize the elementary child who once avoided...

A calm, childproofed bedroom prepared for independent movement and rest. The first time a patient's mother described her toddler's “floor bed” to me, I assumed she meant the kid had knocked the mattress off the frame again. I was wrong, and it turned into one of those...

Parents sometimes walk into a Montessori classroom and notice something missing. No stack of worksheets. No workbooks lined up on a shelf. No thick folder of papers coming home each week showing exactly what got covered that day. If there is not much paper coming...

  When does pencil-and-paper work support learning, and when does it get in the way? Adapted and expanded for contemporary Montessori educators from the July 2007 IMC eNews article. Walk into almost any Montessori classroom, and you will see children engaged in...

September is usually a wonderful month in schools. The classrooms are freshly prepared. Teachers are energized. Parents are hopeful. Children arrive with new backpacks, new lunchboxes, and stories about new friends. For families who have just enrolled, there is often...

  What Is Happening Inside the Brain of a Montessori Child? Every parent who has toured a Montessori school has watched something that looks almost too calm to be real. A four-year-old carries a tray across the room, settles onto a mat, and works with a set of...

A younger child observes an older classmate working independently in a calm, mixed-age Montessori prepared environment. The first time parents encounter a Montessori mixed-age classroom, it can raise real questions. Wouldn't a three-year-old be better off with a room...