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Choice and Trust

In our last newsletter, we mentioned four principles of a Montessori program: interest, choice, trust, and accountability. Today, as we close in on completion of the classroom, we’re thinking a lot about the interactions between choice and trust.

It’s not fair to plunge a child who has not had a lot of experience with a Montessori environment into total free choice. That’s overwhelming and frightening, and leads to children feeling stuck instead of liberated. So we support choice by releasing it slowly, introducing just a few key materials at a time, and observing children with great care. We believe with our whole selves that every child is capable of (and deserves) true freedom within the limits of responsibility to the community. So we hold that vision of the child for each child to step into without pressure or fear.

Time and again, we’ve seen children flourish. Each one does it in their own time, via their own path. Our work is to help them find that path, and then to help them build it, one step at a time.

Make it a Game

After children participate in a presentation or lesson, they are invited to follow up to show their learning. A popular follow-up choice is making a game! You can easily do this at home as well. Start with a game board drawn on a piece of paper, or a set of cards (index cards work well, or cut out some of your own from scrap paper.) You can use dice, or if you don’t have any, print numbers on scraps of paper you draw from a container. Here are some fun games children have designed in the past to inspire you:

  • Start with a basic game board. Write a sight word on each spot. Roll the die, and move your piece forward, then read the word you land on. Add some chance by including spaces like “go ahead one” or “lose a turn.”

  • On a set of cards, write the addition facts for pairs of numbers that make 10. Then, create another set of cards with a visual representation of those facts (for example, 4+6 would look like 4 red dots and 6 blue ones.) Play Go Fish, finding pairs of addition facts and dot cards.

  • What can you and your children come up with?

Coming Up

Starting tomorrow, April 20, we welcome to you to Walk-In Wednesdays! From 10:00 am - 1:00 pm, Carmen will be at Hyacinth so that you can visit. While we’re not completely set up yet, we have all the major pieces in place, and you’ll be able to see what the final space is going to look like.

Please note that the City of Philadelphia currently has an indoor mask mandate in place, and plan to wear a mask if you visit.

If Wednesdays don’t work for you, please send us an email at info@hyacinthmontessori.org to set up a different time to visit. We’ll look forward to showing you around!