Written by Julia Gorham Doing and thinking for young children will contribute to lowered self esteem and undermine their self-confidence. You will create opportunities for your child to develop a lot of self-doubt by sending messages showing that you do not think that they can do things correctly, or that they should not try because you beloved it is too difficult for them. Do not ignore the pleas of the young child “I can do it by myself”. Children with high self esteem are those who are given the opportunity to be decision makers right from the very beginning of their lives. Ch ..read more

The Montessori dressing frames are an important part of the care of the self Practical Life Exercises in our classroom. Each frame isolates one skill of dressing and offers the child the opportunity to perfect this skill by repeating the motion over and over, thus helping her to become independent in dressing him/her self. Being able to dress and undress oneself is one of the major steps to a child’s sense of ndependence. To help children learn how to dress and undress themselves, we provide dressing frames in our classroom on which all the different kinds of clothes fasteners can ..read more

This art activity is very cute and is a good vehicle for practicing fine motor skills when breaking up pieces of polystyrene. You will need: -coloured card: one for the background, one red one for the top part and brown one for the bottom. -glue – a glue stick will work well for sticking the card together but a wood glue works well for the polystyrene. -polystyrene -scissors Make a toadstool with your coloured card. Cut out pieces.Paste them onto the background card.Place glue on the top part of the toadstool. Let the kids break pieces off of the polystyrene and let them ..read more

Opposites may be a fairly abstract concept for little minds, but as teachers we are able to demonstrate the basic idea using different art materials. You can teach opposites with gestures and placement of objects e.g. the ball is in front of the chair, behind the chair etc. But here are a few art lessons we used in our classroom this past week to demonstrate this concept. First we showed empty and full by filling a picture of a gumball machine with little stickers. Great fine motor skills are utilised here when they peal the sticker off and stick it on. Then we illustrated hot and c ..read more

We’ve written on this blog before about plastic bottle aeroplanes, but today we’re going to share how we made rockets from plastic bottles too. You’ll need: plastic bottlecardpaperpaintglitterPrint out the rocket fins. I fitted 12 of these on a A4 page. Then you cut out a harder piece of card for strength and put the fins on either side. Cut two slits on either side of the plastic bottle to slide the fins in. For variation you can make four fins instead of two. Use a circle for a point on top. Cut a slit in it and fold it into a cone and stick it on the lid of the bottle. Get ..read more

This week our theme at school was bugs and the children had fun crafting different kids of bugs. We also made snails out of paper plates and made a fingerprint jar of bugs too. What was really outstanding this week were two very cute bugs which were created from egg cartons and a simple stick. There’s a lot of things you can do with egg cartons, and there are some ingenious ideas from our local blogger lately: check out Harassed Mom‘s bugs (love the toothprick legs) and In These Stilettos firetruck and police car vehicles. EGG CARTON BEE: You will need: egg carton (two compart ..read more

Written by Julia Gorham Dr. Maria Montessori established that sensorial experiences begin right when a child is born. Children use their senses in order to study their environment. By participating in sensory activities, children can consciously obtain clear information that helps them classify their surroundings. These classifications serve as stepping stones to organized intelligence, which gives children the ability to adapt to their environment. Montessori sensorial materials are materials used in the Mon ..read more

By Julia Gorham As a proud Mother of two adult daughters, I am reflecting back on what I hopefully instilled in my daughters. As parents, we are here to guide and love our children through life. “No matter how far we come, our parents are always in us.” Last year,my father celebrated his 82nd birthday and this year my Mother turned 80 years old. This is gift for me and MY family. My mother and father have been wonderful, loving parents to me. They have worked hard to provide a stable foundation for my life and future. They have taught me invaluable lessons about work, marriage, parenting, r ..read more