Video: Blueprint for the classroom: A Way to Move Forward

How do we encourage peacefulness and respect in the Montessori classroom? Together with the children, we prepare a blueprint for our classroom community!

We invite children to share their vision for a wonderful classroom and then ask them: “What do we need to do to achieve that?” Using their ideas and beliefs, we help them define ground rules, from “listening to the person who is talking” to “being gentle with one another”. By engaging them in the process, the children feel heard, take ownership of the rules and feel personally responsible for the classroom community. Check out this video to see how we do it!

Want to learn more? Read our next article:

VIDEO: COMMUNITY ENVIRONMENT

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Mindful Walks and Experiential Learning in Elementary

Maria Montessori used to walk through the forests in India pulling leaves from trees to teach about their function and structure, digging in the soil to demonstrate the ubiquitousness of life, examining root systems and connecting them to academic ideas.

Food preparation

Food Preparation activities are very popular in a Montessori classroom. Not only do children enjoy eating food they’ve prepared themselves, but they learn skills throughout the process.

Magic mat

There are a few things typical to Montessori classrooms worldwide that might give the casual observer a pause. Picture it: you walk into a beautiful Casa environment, full of children working, many of them on mats rolled out on the floor. The students moving through the room know to step between mats, never on them. Of course, in the beginning of the school year it took many presentations, repetitions and reminders to instill this routine in the students.

Learning Mathematics in our Primary Classrooms

Maria Montessori often stated that not only does every human being have an innate drive to understand the environment around them, we all also naturally have what she called a “Mathematical Mind”. In the Montessori classroom, mathematical learning begins through indirect preparation long before a child is ever introduced to any Math materials.

Cooking With Children can be fun

It is often said that “the family that eats together, stays together”. We would like to suggest taking it a step further – and encourage every family to cook together, too. In Montessori, we know that kitchen work provides a host of benefits to children, all the way from toddlers to adolescents; it is a part of the Practical Life curriculum as soon as children can walk! However, its advantages are in no way tied to the classroom and can be just as easily – if not more so – applied at home.