The Joy Of Learning

Respect

The true hallmark of Montessori is its deep respect for the dignity of every child. While Montessori is used in a wide variety of communities with different religious backgrounds, Dr. Montessori was a Catholic and her philosophy is very much influenced by Catholic teaching of “the inherent dignity of the human person”

Respect does not mean that everybody is supposed to pretend to like everybody else all the time. Respect does mean that conflicts are to be resolved with consideration for the dignity of everyone involved. Respect is the foundation for access to the higher possibilities of learning.

Maria Montessori began looking at education from the child’s point of view, and recognized that children do not learn the same way that adults do. She also saw that adults often greatly underestimate the intellectual capacity of children, because the children are not able to express themselves fully in adult-style communication.

In a Montessori classroom, the respect toward children is based on Maria Montessori’s discovery and insight that children learn and think very differently from adults. Adults may start their learning with abstraction i.e. an adult college student may listen to a mathematics professor lecture about mathematical principles he has no concrete experience with the principles being described. Children very rarely learn in this way. Respect for the child, therefore, opened the way for the insight that children learn best from sensory approaches to knowledge before attempting abstraction. For example, the first step in learning to read is to trace one’s fingers over sandpaper cutouts of the letters of the alphabet. “From hands to mind” is the practical foundation of the Montessori Method.

The children are also shown to work on a small mat laid out on the floor and putting works away properly so that next person can use them. The mat sets the boundaries of the work, and guide the other children to respect others’ need to concentrate and not to disturb them at work. This teaches respect for the environment and to work with others in cooperative and constructive ways. As children learn about ways to care about the micro environment and the people in it, they will learn to care for the community and global environment.”Respect” in Montessori is not a command or a code for hierarchy, in the sense of authotarian “students must respect the teacher.” But, certainly, students must respect the teacher, and the teacher must respect the students, and the students must respect each other. Of course since nobody is perfect, nobody at in a Montessori school achieves this high standard of respect every single moment during the school year.

Tim Seldin, president of the Montessori Foundation, explains that “Montessori is a way of life. It is a philosophy about how human beings ought to live their lives and treat one another. It is an attitude of respect for each human being, no matter how young or how old. It is a sense of partnership, rather than power and authority.” (”Montessori in the Home,” Tomorrow’s Child, Spring 2000, p. 5.)

Respect your child’s needs to be independent

Today, I helped to babysit my friend’s 20 months old son for a couple of hours. We went out lunch together and I brought him along when I went for grocery shopping. There were more than one stranger commented how good he was at the coffee shop and at the grocery store. When we were at the coffee shop having lunch. They have one of those espresso machines at the coffee shop and the boy was  obviously intrigued by it.

The woman sat next to us was screaming and her two toddlers were also screaming. She was busy stopping her children from everything that they attempted to do, i.e. the girl who looked like 3-4 years old was trying to use the fork, and she kept saying “no, no, no…” . She wanted to feed the children and they wanted to eat by themselves, you can see the struggles to be independent and the struggle of the mother to keep things under control

Actually I saw this too often when I ate out, sometime I even saw 7-8 years old children were being fed instead of eating by themselves. Many parents do not realize that children have the needs to be independent. This is really an opportunity to guide them to independence, you indirectly acknowledge and respect their needs when you do so. In the process of helping them to learn new skills, you unknowingly help them to be motivated by their joy of learning a new skill rather than the need for external validation.

What I did with my friend’s son was: I just gave him a few toufu cubes, fish balls and a few pieces of carrot in a bowl, and he can eat them all by himself while I enjoyed my lunch. He didn’t know how to use the fork and spoon, so he just use his fingers. Yes, he may dirty his fingers, but then you can show him how to wash hands, later.

Young children has strong desires and needs to “do it myself”, as adults, our role is to show them how to do it themselves. I understand the need to stay control and the mess it may create by letting them eat by themselves, but then they are good learning opportunities, what a waste to scream your head off to stop them.

Sweeping - Dust Pan & Whisk Broom

Sweeping – Dust Pan & Whisk Broom #2

Materials:
Tray containing:
Small dust pan
Whisk broom
Small scraps of paper in a bowl

Preparation of Tray:
Tape a line down the center of the tray

Set-up:
The dust pan, whisk broom and small paper scraps in a bowl should be placed on the tray.

Presentation:
1. Invite the child or group of children.
2. Go over to where the work is kept.
3. Take the tray over to a table.
4. Remove everything from the tray.
5. Scatter the small paper scraps on one side of the taped line on the tray.
6. Take turns whisking the paper scraps into the dustpan from one side of the taped line to the other.
7. Return the paper scraps to the bowl by emptying the dust pan from the corner.
8. Repeat until all the paper scraps have been returned to the bowl.
9. If need be, return the tray to its appropriate place.
10. Invite a child.

Variations and Extensions:
1. Use different types of whisk brooms
2. Use different materials to whisk up

Points of Interest:
1. Checking to see that everything has been whisked
2. Moving around the table to approach the taped line from the other direction

Control of Error:
1. Dropped paper scraps on the floor
2. Paper scraps left on the table

Aims:
Eye hand coordination, ability to sweep with a whisk broom, taking care of the environment, coordination, concentration, order, preparation for cutting and writing

Age:
2 and up

Language:
Scraps, sweep, whisk, edge, line, etc.

Wrist Turning Tools - Bolts and Wing Nuts

PLE Activities 

Tools – Bolts and Wing Nuts

Materials:
A basket on a shelf/table containing:
Large bolts and wing nuts
2 Felt table mats

Presentation:
1.Invite the child or group of children.
2.Go over to where the work is kept and take it to a table.
3.Place the basket of bolts and wing nuts on the table and to the left.
4.Place the two felt mats next to the basket on the right.
5.Pick up one bolt and unscrew the wing nut.
6.Lay the bolt on the left side of the felt mat, and the wing nut to the right of it.
7.Repeat until all bolts and wing nuts have been laid out on the felt mats.
8.Admire work.
9.Reverse and screw the wing nuts onto the bolts.
10.Place the bolts with wing nuts attached back in the basket.
11.Return the basket and felt mats to their proper places.
12.Invite a child.

Variations and Extensions:
1.Use different sized bolts and wing nuts
2.Add washers

Points of Interest:
1.Seeing how long it takes to screw and unscrew
2.Matching

Control of Error:
1.Wing nuts do not go on
2.Wing nuts do not come off
3.Bolts left in basket
4.Bolts left on mats
5.Drop bolts and/or wing nuts

Aims:
Eye hand coordination, concentration, control, ability to screw materials on and off, preparation for cutting and writing, etc.

Age:
2 ½ and up

Language:
Bolts, wing nuts, screwing, loose, tight, etc.

Homeschooling, Education etc, pt 2

I blog about my view on Homescholing and Education sometime ago. My view on education and schooling can be rather radical for most people. I know many people in Malaysia cannot imagine not sending their children to school nor seeing themselves be the teachers. My doctor friends challenged us [me and Ann, the homeschool advocates. :-)]

” You went through the traditional schooling and you turned out fine, just like many of us, you can’t deny that mass schooling system had served us well”

Well, I know if you are reading this blog, you were doing fine in the mass schooling system, or at least you learned how to read in English through the system.:-)

But, do you know many who don’t? In my primary school, I have 93 classmates in two different classes. After six years of education, half didn’t continue schooling. After another three years, less than ten of us eventually went through high school, guess how many of us went to university?

Some of my classmates who dropped out of school were very successful today. They were not any less intelligent than any of us who spent years studying and studying, but the school system failed to give them an education that enable them to read a letter in English or any language for that matter. Though they are successful monetary wise today, they are so convinced that they were failures/losers in school, instead of thinking that the school system had failed them.

So many parents today either “have” to send their children to private tutors or have to spend equal amount of time stressing over supervising their children’ school work at home. Which make me wonder, even homeschoolers don’t spend that much time doing school. You can imagine the stress for some children who starts school at 5.45 a.m (got to go out early, traffic jam) and don’t come home till 7.30p.m. Even in small town like Malacca, this is a norm nowadays, which worries me.

Since the children go to school for inhumanly long hours and spent long hours doing school work at home, do we even need surveys to find out that our children are over stressed and even 9 years old have suicidal thoughts? Ask anyone who is into counseling and mental health business, you will hear the gory and the not so glorified stories of children who were not able to cope with the stress, exactly opposite of what you usually read about the straight As students after the public exam’s results were announced.

Something is seriously wrong when children have to do school work at school and do school work at home. In my opinion, school work is for school time, family should do family stuff together. Spending time as a family doesn’t have to be a vacation at Caribbean villa rentals, it can be just a read aloud session every night or a picnic on weekends. When family time is spent yelling at children who didn’t want to do homework, no wonder our teenagers think parents do not understand them.

Purposeful Play and Homemade Toys

Would your child tidy up her/his toys after playing with them? Would he destroyed/torn apart the expensive toys after the initial excitement of new toys? Would you be surprised that children would play with the same “toys” over and over and knew exactly where to return them.

Many find it perplex that children are more engage with this simple “toys” than the colourful, expensive and sophisticated toys that available commercially.

I thought I will share some of these inexpensive “toys” that fascinated many children.

1) Stringing wooden beads

You can buy from the educational toy stores which costs a bomb, or you can do DIY.

(a) Buy some shoes lace.

(b) Buy some wooden beads (I bought from a sewing supplies shop, these are beads for curtains and lanterns)

2) connecting PVC pipes (No, you are not training your kids to be plumbers:-))

(a) several PVC pipes, have the hardware store cut into 1′ and 6″ lengths.
(b) 3 L-shaped connectors, one side has teeth to screw on
(c) 3 straight connectors, one side has teeth to screw on.

The Presentations can be found at this post:

Nomenclature Cards

Whole to Parts - Nomenclature Cards

Direct aim:
1) Development of visual discrimination: graphme matching.
2) Order, concentration, coordination, and self esteem.
3) Vocabulary development

Indirect aim:
Preparation for associating initial sounds of words with the alphabet symbol

Materials:

One set of language arts “3-part cards” maybe organized as follows:

Group a1: can, map, jam, cap
Group a2: fan, gas, pan, rag
Group a3: man, yam, tag, cab
Group e1: bed, hen, peg, net
Group e2: hen, jet, red, pen
Group e3: keg, leg, ten, web
Group i1: bib, fig, tin, rim
Group i2: fin, kid, bin, zip
Group i3: lip, pin, pig, wig
Group o1: cob, log, mop, dot
Group o2: cot, dog, pot, wok
Group o3: top, fox, pod, hog
Group u1: bud, jug, mug, nut
Group u2: sun, bug, bus, tub
Group u3: cup, gum, sun, pup

Montessori Pink Reading Blending Sounds with Objects

Blending Sounds with Objects

Direct aim:
1) Identify the separate sound in a word.
2) Order, concentration, corrdination, independence, and self esteem.

Indirect aim
1) Preparation for writing and reading
2) Preparation for spelling

Control of Error
1) The adult
2) The child’s auditory sense

Materials:
Object may be organized in the following groupings:
Group a1: can, tag, map
Group a2: pan, fan, bag
Group a3: ham, jam, cap
Group e1: peg, hen, jet
Group e2: bed, red, ten
Group e3: pen, net, leg
Group i1: bib, tin, lid
Group i2: pin, wig, zip
Group i3: kid, pig, bin
Group o1: log, mop, pot
Group o2: dog, dot, cot
Group o3: cob, top, fox
Group u1: bud, cup, sun
Group u2: bug, pup, gum
Group u3: nut, bus, jug

Presentation 1:
1)Invite the child to work with the objects for sound blending
2) Show the child where the objects for sound blending are located on the shelf.
3) Select the group a1 container and carry it to the table or rug.
4) Remove the objects in group a1 one at a time, place them in a horizontal row from left to right: can, tag, map

5) Select the object (can) to the left and place it before the child. Say the word “can”. Then say, /c/ /a/ /n/
6) Replace 6the object (an) in its original position.
7) Select the next object (tag) to the right. Place it before the child. Say the word “tag”. Then say, /t/ /a/ /g/
8) Replace the object in its original position.
9) Select the next object (map)to the right. Place the object before the child. Say the word “map”. Then say, /m/ /a/ /p/.
10) Replace the object in its original position.
11) Say, “Hand me the /c/ /a/ /n/” Continue with the commands with the remaining objects.
12) Say, “What is this?” “Can you make the sounds in that word?”
13) Continue in this manner with the remaining objects
14) Return the objects to the container, replacing the materials one at a time from left to right.
15) Return the material to the shelf.

Presentaion 2:
1) Continue in this manner with objects in group a2 thrpugh u3.

Variation
Each day at group time
(1) Present blending with objects
2) Sound out children’s names
3) Sound out objects in the room i.e. box, pin, map, lid.
4) Sound out made-up words. The children “guess” the word being blended.

Language:
1) The names of objects
2) the separate sounds in words.

Age:
4-5 years