5 Excellent Examples of Montessori Work Stations in Preschool Classrooms

Montessori excels in providing well-rounded preschool education to children that includes fields like practical experience and social interaction. The Montessori Method was built around helping the whole child development, including physical development and learning from several distinct categories ranging from sensory development to learning how to write.

1. Practical Life

Practical life experience teaches private preschool children to do common tasks and use household tools and utensils. Practical life tools can be almost any common tool or procedure. Commonly, younger children learn to measure and pour, use a mop or broom, set the table, and more. These are personal skills that the kids will use throughout their lives and are considered indispensable in a well-rounded education.

2. Sensorial Discovery

Sensorial tools vary based on a child’s age and development. Daycares employ sensory– sometimes called discovery– bottles that contain things that can be shaken, poured, smelled, and more. Older kids get their hands dirty planting seeds, they play taste and smell games, and develop communication skills that allow distributing information between individuals. 

3. Cultural Diversity

A simple tool to learn about cultural diversity is a spinnable globe. Young children assemble carefully selected map puzzles, and all children learn about the origins of foods, clothing, language, and more. Montessori embraces diversity in life, including learning about cultures from all over the world, differently challenged people, and simply accepting others for who they are without prejudice or conflict.

4. Essential Mathematics

Small children find the Pink Tower fun and engaging, and that simple tool is probably one of the best-known tools found in a Montessori classroom, but it is far from the only one. Brown blocks, golden beads, and binomial cubes are all authentic Montessori “toys” that teach skills ranging from basic sorting to advanced mathematics.

5. Learning Language

Language and literacy are essential aspects of education, and Montessori incorporates language into everything from music and movement to puzzles, nature, and social interaction. Grace and courtesy are at the heart of Montessori education and require essential communication skills and vocabularies in order to work at all. 

Every authentic Montessori classroom will have workstations that involve the five categories discussed here. These categories were incorporated into the Montessori Method and are often taught in tandem, with elements from different fields mixed together to provide a balanced educational curriculum. There are hundreds of Montessori-derived activities on the market, and all of them serve a specific role in one or more of the categories discussed here.

What Kind of Technology is Appropriate for the Kindergarten Classroom?

Montessori schools are known for their use of hands-on activities and finely-crafted wooden work items. But Montessori is not blind to the advance of technology either, and modern private kindergartens do teach children to use technology as well. You won’t find much technology available to young Montessori students, but it becomes more common as children get older and reach developmental goals that are considered paramount.

Wait For It

Your child’s Montessori kindergarten is doing more than teaching academic skills. The Montessori Method is focused on whole-child education that includes social skills, practical life experiences, physical activity, and more. And while today’s modern world demands that children are exposed to technology, kids need to accomplish certain developmental goals before becoming inured in solitary activities that inhibit that development. During the sensitive periods between birth and age 6, technology should be carefully monitored and restricted so that it doesn’t interfere with critical learning phases.

Digital Literacy

Digital literacy is important and by the time children enter kindergarten, they are on their way toward developing critical thinking skills and social skills that many popular apps bypass. We have certainly become a digitally-oriented society, but children need to understand that technology cannot replace solid education, including using apps and websites to acquire fast answers instead of applying intrinsic skills to problem-solving.

Must Be Meaningful

In a Montessori classroom, the use of technology such as computers must provide meaningful instruction. Instead of using Wikipedia, children are guided toward apps that require concentration and investigation outside of the digital world. Apps that help children learn specific subjects, including language, reading, math, and science are the order of the day. Technology is used as a tool to accomplish goals, not as a shortcut to avoid actual learning.

Practical Programming

Apps that teach and interactive programs to make it easier to collaborate are sometimes found in a Montessori kindergarten. In today’s pandemic times, apps are also a viable alternative to gathering in classrooms during infectious surges but human contact is crucial to early development and even the most practical applications should be used as sparingly as possible. Again, it is a balancing act between giving children a technologically-friendly education and allowing technology to prevent normal advancements in critical thinking, socially interacting and learning to do things using their own hands and minds.

Technology like tablets and phones have become beneficial in our lives, but we must take care not to let them become our only focus. No matter how simple it may be to simply ask Google a question, that will never replace the skills that derive from learning to use the Dewey Decimal System or exploring facts using encyclopedias, dictionaries, and thesauruses.

4 Great Tips for Getting Your Private Kindergarten Child Organized

It is easy for private kindergarten children to forget about being organized, but parents and teachers can reinforce organization by role modeling organized behavior like arranging books on a shelf, storing dishes in the same place every time, and more. In addition to what they learn from observing the adults in their lives, children can also learn organizational skills with these simple tips.

1. Routines

Establishing routines is a wonderful way to help Montessori kindergarten children become more organized. From cleaning out and sorting their bookbag after school to laying out tomorrow’s wardrobe before bed, when kids have a consistent order for events they are easier to follow. Routines are useful in helping your kids remember what to do and when to do it, something everyone– even grownups– needs in their daily lives.

2. Put-Away Process

Maria Montessori believed that children needed to have the freedom to move around the room and choose their own activities. Consequently each item a child plays with needs to be put back in place when they are done so that the next person will know where to find it. This same approach to “stuff” works well at home. Give your kids the freedom to be small people, but double down on that approach and ask them to be responsible for cleaning up and putting away as well.

3. Making the List

A whiteboard mounted in an easily accessible location makes it more practical for kids to keep track of the things that need to be organized. Making lists can be a lot of fun, and using a daily checklist instills a sense of self-esteem when kindergartners are able to see what they have accomplished.

4. Single Tasking

When there is a list of things to do and routines that need to be followed, everything can feel a little overwhelming. To balance these things out, it is important to show children how to focus on one task at a time, follow it through to its conclusion, and then move on to something else. In this way, a mountain of objectives can be reduced to molehills that can be realistically managed as previous tasks are completed.

Becoming more organized begins with adopting an organized approach to the chaos. By following routines, completing one objective before moving on to the next, and putting away things that are no longer being used, your kids are developing a habit of organizing their lives and surroundings. If they are ever going to change the world, they have to begin by learning to control their surroundings.

If Montessori Doesn’t Use Punishment, What Kind of Behavior Strategies are Used?

Attending a Montessori daycare is a special type of learning environment. From carefully designed activities to avoiding rewards and punishments to direct child behaviors, the Montessori Method is uniquely focused on assisting each child in becoming happy children that are capable of governing themselves in a manner that is acceptable to the class as a whole.

A Controlled Environment

Authentic Montessori daycare uses a carefully laid-out room to dampen unwanted behaviors. The controlled environment encourages children to be busily engaged and reduces the opportunity for disruptive or attention-seeking behavior. And because children are allowed to move relatively freely between activities, situations such as boredom that are known to encourage bad behavior are minimized.

Role Playing Solutions

One way for children to learn appropriate behavior patterns is by engaging in role-playing activities that highlight situations where such behavior is desired. This helps children develop interactive skills and builds critical thinking. It gives children a chance to work through ways to avoid unwanted behavior in an environment where those who are affected by such behavior are helping each child find suitable solutions.

Conflict Resolution

Critical thinking skills are important for everything from following routines to participating in a  group environment. Conflict resolution helps children discover the value of sharing, and teaches them key diplomatic skills they will use throughout their lives to avoid confrontation and achieve desired goals.

Criticize Privately

In the Montessori classroom, instructors do not single out children to criticize or ridicule. Instead, the child is taken aside and the situation is discussed with the child patiently and rationally. Because children have an innate desire to be happy and to create happiness in those around them, reinforcing desired behavior encourages them to put it to use. Furthermore, openly calling out a child before the entire class encourages rebellious or other behaviors that disrupt the other child and create chaos in the ordered environment.

Patience and Respect

Montessori treats children like small adults. Each child is accorded respect and dignity, and the teachers maintain order through patient reminders and careful guidance. The underlying concept is that by treating children with respect, the children learn to respect themselves, and that leads to respect for those around them.

The strategies used in your child’s Montessori daycare will be consistently adhered to as she gets older as well. Consistency is vital in maintaining order, and Montessori applies consistency to all aspects of the educational process. Instead of a system built on reward and punishment, Montessori instills children with intrinsic motivation to accomplish goals without outside influence.