Category Archives: choices

Montessori modified for home education.

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abacus

Well, while we do not have a multi aged classroom of 30-60 children with 4-8 trained Montessori teachers, we can modify Maria Montessori’s method of education for our home.

What we’re doing together is NOT “The Montessori Method”. Maria made it clear that each Children’s House was to have a complete set of equipment and set up in such a way that, if you moved about from school to school, you couldn’t find any substantial difference, with either the physical room or the teaching staff. If her Method was to be held up as a ‘scientifically provable’ method of education, then each room needed to be almost like a ‘science experiment’, repeatable and identical in every detail possible.

 

We are not able to replicate her model here. We can modify the main principles to suit our continuing journey with learning though. We do this because we LOVE Montessori… it just ‘fits’ well with how we behave and how we relate to each other, our family and friends, and to the learning process. So we have some guiding principles from the Maria’s writings to draw upon, which are:

  • Follow the child.
  • If a child demonstrates observable concentration when learning a new skill or mastering a skill, do not interrupt.
  • Do not help the child with something they feel they can succeed in.
  • Ignite interest but let that interest be free to develop.
  • Freedom is the matching of Liberty to work, and the Will to work. Liberty comes from having a prepared environment where choices are available, Will comes from within the child’s desire to learn. The prepared environment includes a ’3 hour work cycle’, usually in the morning, where the children know they won’t be interrupted. Where learning is progressively introduced and also where they experience the highest amount of Will, or desire, to learn.multiplication board

Every change we have made has been based on our discussions, where both M and D have had the Freedom to choose, always.

Although I’ve ‘ticked off outcomes’ in both the Board of Studies NSW curriculum and the Montessori curriculum, we haven’t always followed a routine or used the materials during a work cycle. During our meetings and discussions both M and D wanted very much for us to have routines, to use the Montessori materials more and to have definite ‘computer use time’, as all three of us have spent far too much time on computers over the past couple of years. Do you have that problem in your home?

Here are some  more samples of the work we are currently doing.

Stomach modelcakeheart modelroutine

So far we’ve enjoyed one whole month of gently, at first, moving back into a regular daily routine. Last week went exceptionally well. After they follow a morning ritual of getting their bodies ready (bathroom, breakfast… you know lol), they then start a three hour work cycle. Food is eaten when required, but we stop for lunch after those three hours. Two more hours is then devoted to projects and what Montessori called the ‘Great Work’, which basically means ‘learning something they’re obsessed about’. After 2pm it’s free time, and computers can go on (if they weren’t already used for research etc). At 5pm we stop for a 30 min cleaning roster where everyone chooses what room they start in and we all have jobs that we can do independently. Night time brings dinner, bath/book/bed and then I have time to write, and prepare for the next day, before retiring myself.

writing

It’s still a work in progress, however, we’re definitely on a good path. No one is resisting the change, in fact they hold me to task and remind me to NOT be on Facebook before 2pm!

All the best!

 

 

Notes for the parent tutor

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Do you remember the video for Pink Floyd’s ‘Another Brick in the Wall’? ( here’s a link for the video cliphttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR5ApYxkU-U) Watch this with your Schooled child and discuss with open communication your experiences as a Schooled child. Consider reclaiming your role as their FIRST teacher. Tutoring your own child is about helping them understand not just what’s taught in class but how to understand the world. What I’d love for you to know, Parents, is that in ‘their eyes’ we brought them into the world, they are only here because we decided to create them. They look to US for help on that sometimes frightening job of learning about the world but then they get put into a School and are away from us, isolated from the ‘real world’ as we call it. Then we expect them to learn in isolation from the ‘real world’ how to live in the ‘real world’. It’s not just a school thing, it’s for any family that restricts what their children can and can’t learn about, but it is also a ‘School thing’ as at no other time in our lives do we get segregated into ‘same age groups’ and forced to learn at a teacher’s pace, day in day out.

We used to have children knowing it was a lifelong commitment to another person, the way we used to view marriage. It’s part of becoming an adult to leave your own childhood behind and become ‘responsible’ for another human. Now we have a baby and go back to work, somewhere between 6 weeks and 6 years later. Women are punished socially for not returning to work in some circles, in others returning to work is the crime. Mummy Wars are the new competition that are added to the war on image that’s been playing out for decades.

Clearing up the realities for a minute, just forget about what other’s think about how you’re living your life, the reality is that no one else will do the job of ‘raising our children’ for you. Sure they’ll ‘babysit’ and they’ll ‘educate’ but as far as ‘being there for them’, well that’s our job. Delegating is a choice and the consequences can be life changing. Our children still look at us to be the one’s ultimately responsible for them until they too are grown and ready to be responsible for someone else.

How much damage does it take before you can’t reconnect with your child? Don’t let the opportunity to turn things around vanish without your full consideration. Wishing you all the very best with your journeys.

Here is the full length movie of ‘The Wall’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQE3vcwU97g

What we do…. and then some

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In the wee small hours…before crashing into bed (probably literally at this stage) I’m reminded that I need to share more of what we actually do with home education if this blog and my website link are to be in anyway useful.

Well their dad was a blacksmith when she was born!
 
Oh wow… that foil covered shield looks shiney!
Battle time… the only time they fight!

 

  • Monday Morning Meetings… we gather and go over what each of my munchkins want to do with their week academically, socially, inside, outside… what ever really. Then I raise the topics of what I feel would be good to cover and we discuss all of what we’ve raised. From this we write up a plan of things I need to do, they need to do, places we need to go, things we need to buy etc. Usually we come up with other things during the week but I have a written record of the conversation so I can monitor what is going on during the week, make comments, suggestions, give reminders etc. This process works best for us and stops us falling into the common unschooling trap of everyone going off to do their own thing, nothing gets done, gaps in sequential learning develop and well… we genuinely miss each other! It may seem strange, but when we’re off doing our own thing we may not see each other all day! Now that both of my children are capable of independent research they get heavily invested into what they are doing. Another aspect is Continue reading →

Conference Reef and stuff!

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It’s time for me to publish a post on my blog. What shall it be about hmmmm? Well I’m not really motivated to do more than say that life goes on, ups and downs…. oh we attended the Australian Unschooling Conference. It was very intense, sublime and the setting was awesome.

We swam in the warm waters of the Great Barrier Reef and although it broke my heart to be there, knowing what tourism and CSG etc is doing to the natural wonder I managed to balance out my own personal dilemma of contributing to the tourism.Once there I saw that the area we saw was fairly dull and up further was much brighter… I like (tongue in cheek) that we may have been ‘kept away’ from the pristine parts… but it’s still something I struggle with. I still feel as though a dream of mine has been fulfilled.

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End of Term 2

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Well we’re winding down to the end of another school term. While there are many people driving around, picking up their children from school or finishing up from work and plan to pick up their children from after school care, I know there will be discussions and phone calls to book children into holiday care programs, people taking time off work and grandparents having holiday time with their school aged grandchildren. Holidays are a very busy time for most people. The two weeks off for our winter break, here in Australia, will mean the roads will be filled with more cars containing more children than usual, shops will be full of people between 9am and 3pm as well as there being ‘more things to do’ at the Art Galleries and Museums etc.

Holidays are a quiet time for most Home Educating families. There is a tendency to stay away from busy places and avoid the traffic. Sport activities are usually on break too
so there is ‘less’ to do with our children. If it wasn’t so bitterly cold we would probably be going camping or at least making day trips out of town to see some sights. As it happens we’ll be continuing on with our academic type of activities and reading a lot. M is busy borrowing and reading books for the MS Read-a-thon while D is really enjoying learning to read. We’ve just visited the local library and have borrowed many books, DVD’s and CD roms that will take care of the rest of the week’s literacy requirements!

On the way home from the library we stopped in at the shops. With mince on sale D could easily see that the higher the amount per kilo the higher the final price and the less mince you could afford. He was able to choose the best pre-packaged deal and both M and D completed the shopping themselves with the self-serve checkout.

Navigating around an already busy car-park we discussed how easy it is for drivers not to see children when reversing, people smoking cigarettes in public places where children are as well as looking forward to going home and getting into our projects. This week D doesn’t have Joeys but we do have a Cubs activity of ice-sledding with a pre-made slab of ice with some rope frozen in it. Should be fun to see the children using these to slide down the grassy hill! Following that we have a sleep over in the Scouts Hall and that will mark the official end of Term 2 for us.

Term 3 will see us doing more learning from everyday experiences, introducing MORE literacy and numeracy into our daily activities for D as well as working on our projects. Most of the learning M and D do is self directed, I just provide the materials and drive them to where they need to be. We all have our ongoing projects which keep us learning and concentrating on big concepts for sustained periods of time.

My current projects are
* GTD – re-reading for about the 7th time as well as listening to pod-casts based on Getting Things Done, by David Allen
*Music – I recently took my girls to see the Newcastle Conservatorium Choir and I’m now listening to more excellent quality singing … this may turn into a project of rejoining a choir, as I was involved with a Welch choir for a while.
*Writing – I’m reading more books about writing, specifically blogging but this project is one that doesn’t have a deadline. I’m quiet happy for this to remain a behind the scenes activity as really it is Home Educating that takes up my time, energy as well and gives me a most profound and satisfying sense of joy!

Watching my children naturally using their manners while playing with children they don’t know in a park when I know that their aged peers in schools would be unlikely to say “Excuse me, are you using this play equipment? I was wondering if I could use the swing please?” gives me chills! Firstly, it must seem strange that children of that age are using their manners but also the comments I get, especially from people over 50 is really enjoyable, especially for my children. They are taken seriously, they are respected, they are listened to by adults. They are ‘part of the community’ and are seen already as contributors of our community. There is no “wait until you’re in the ‘real world’ youngen” for them! They ARE in the ‘real world’, what ever that really means and they are involving themselves on a daily basis with people of varied backgrounds, of various ages and they are doing all of this not with a script or after having undergone some advanced social curriculum but as themselves, completely void of the deliberate interference of peer-pressure, social ridicule, misaligned learning, religious or intellectual dogma and without the need to ‘perform’ to an arbitrary standard that may or may not include rewards or punishments. They are free to be themselves and they are free to learn what they want, when they want. I do organise their activities and have a routine based on how best they learn and also when they are most alert (morning 3 hour work cycle, which is based on the Montessori Method) and also I limit the amount of computer and television that they watch, giving them both free time after 2pm to either work on their computers or watch some ABC kids tv.

As well we continue to enjoy play-dates and get-togethers with other Home Educating families! I’ve very fortunate to have a large social group of other families to interact with. During the holidays I hope to finish off some emails and letters to friends who are not local as well as see some of our school friends during the weekdays when they are usually away from their parents and other friends, who either go to other schools or Home Educate, like us.