As a former teacher, I've always been in awe of the Montessori method and its outstanding results ... I wish, wish, wish we'd been taught how to implement even minor Montessori methods in our education classes (it was kind of treated like a dirty word) ... instead we were drilled more on how to proctor standardized tests ... **sigh** and some people wonder why I'm not a teacher anymore
-----Original Message----- From: Zaphod Beeblebrox [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, January 28, 2008 11:19 AM To: CF-Community Subject: Did a 5 hour tour of my daughters' school Saturday. All three of my daughters go to a Montessori school. We get things home from them and wonder what exactly they are or how they can do things like this (My 7.9 year old is doing multiplication of 3 digit numbers by 2 digit numbers). So they have this thing once a year called "Journey of Discovery"....cheesy name for sure, but it's a 5 hour walkthrough of the Montessori classroom from toddler to 6th grade. I was amazed at the amount of stuff in the toddler and preprimary classrooms. There were shelves upon shelves of "works" and knick knacks. Everything was in it's place though. The surprising thing was that it was maintained that way by the kids themselves. At that level they start teaching responsibility to self and the group. "If you don't put something back right, the next person to use it won't know where to find it". In the 1st~3rd grade class they showed us how they do bead math by doing problems like 156x84 and 208/13, etc....all in a manipulative way. It was quite amazing. In the 4th~6th classroom, they showed us how to find the sq root of 1369, again with beads. They showed the research projects on evolution and mankind's development from early man to modern man, one research project a month. I forgot to mention that once they master the concept of the math with beads, they're taught the abstract form of doing it. The theory being that once they know how something works, they can abstract the process out. Before it got started though, all the parents that had children attending were asked to relate a "Montessori" moment. I had forgotten about this until my wife retold it.... My twin daughters were fighting one day and it was getting very heated. My 7 year old ran out of the room and came back a few seconds later carrying two teddy bears of hers. My wife was listening to what was going on just outside the door. My 7yo handed a bear to each sister and told them, "These are your peace bears to keep forever. Whenever you and sister fight, you need to get your peace bear and hug it as hard as you can instead of hitting or pinching your sister. The more angry you are, the harder you need to hug it. This way nobody gets hurt and if you hug it hard enough, you'll feel better" My wife was pretty impressed with this and later she thanked our 7yo for thinking of this idea. My wife noticed that the girls got very different size bears, one being about 12 inches tall and the other being about 2.5 feet tall. She asked my 7yo why she gave one sister such a big bear and she replied, "Because I know she's got a lot more anger inside of her" That was definitely the conflict management classes working there :) -- "We were freedom >From the moment that we hit the ground And the wild man He laid the thunder down" ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;160198600;22374440;w Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:252193 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
