Montessori in the News (Kind of)

This past week Montessori got attention, but only to those who know about Montessori.  The president visited a school in Decatur,Georgia as part of his plan to expand the nation's preschool programs.  Though, College Heights Early Childhood Learning Center does not project itself as a Montessori school it clearly contains Montessori materials.  Here's to president Obama seeing and interacting with Montessori materials! (Makes me want to invite him to my school):

These children, along with president Obama, are working with the pink tower and the broad stair.  These materials belong to a family of Montessori materials called sensorial materials.  Sensorial materials are used to help the child concentrate on and refine his sensory skills so that he can make classifications within his environment.  The materials were designed to isolate the one quality that the child is to focus on.

Pictured above are the broad stair and pink tower in their standard configurations, once the child has mastered this he is allowed to expand upon these configurations with guides that the teacher provides, eventually combining both works, and then designing configurations of his own.

 

 

Toddlers can easily work with a half set of the pink tower and broad stair, i.e. every other one, five total.  They can also do extensions and combinations with guides.

Her first solo pink tower completion.

 

 

I usually let them/have them work together for the combination extensions where the pink tower and broad stair are used together.  There are a lot of materials involved and the toddler brain has a tendency to overload and shut down when things are too many in number and overwhelming   Also, it lets them learn how to share and collaborate towards a common goal.  All Montessori toddler programs should include these fundamental sensorial materials in their curriculum!