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FAQ |
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1) What would a
typical day at Centennial be like? Our
typical day follows a schedule that allows the children to establish and
develop their own natural rhythms. In
keeping with the AMI Montessori philosophy, our morning program consists of a
three hour work cycle. At the end of
the work cycle, the younger children go outside to play before being picked
up by their parents. Those who stay
for lunch begin to set up and then eat lunch.
After lunch they go outside for a period of free play followed by a
roughly two hour work cycle in the afternoon.
Following the work cycle, the children get ready to go home and play
outside until the parents arrive. The
work cycle is an uninterrupted time where children can choose their
activities from what they have been presented, can join a small group
activity, or may receive a presentation of new work. In addition to the Montessori materials,
the Montessori work period includes any practical life activities such as
cooking, gardening, working in the yard, sewing, etc. It also includes music and art activities
and outside exploration (looking at the shape of leaves, finding insects,
feeding the birds). All of these
activities are considered Montessori work and the children are free within
certain limits to choose their own activities. Small groups happen spontaneously and there
is no formulaic timetable for these activities. An
example of a day for one 4 year old may look like is described below, but it
is important to note that the three hour cycle allows a child to establish
his own routines and thus one child’s work may look very different from
another’s. The purpose of the
extended cycle is to encourage independence and allow time so that the child
is not rushed in any given activity.
Through this open time, the child gains the confidence and the ability
to make good choices for oneself, but even this is a process. A child may at times need guidance from
peers, the assistants or the directress to choose work or may participate
more frequently in small groups until they feel more capable to choose work
and transition from one piece of work to another. A
day in the life of a Montessori child: The child enters, changes into inside
shoes and hangs up his coat. As this
child stays for the full day, he also places his lunch box on the shelf. This particular child has a morning routine
that he has established and likes to follow.
He goes to the bathroom and then washes his hands. Then he takes out the orange squeezing
activity and almost always works on that first. After offering a glass or orange juice to
his friend, he drinks his own glass and finishes the activity by cleaning up
so that it is ready for the next person.
Now he chooses a few more activities, which he completes easily. As he is working on washing the windows, he
sees a group forming in the other room and decides to join. He dries the window and puts away his work,
quietly joining the group activities.
The group is not quite so interesting to him on this occasion and
after a while he wanders away to get a snack and chat with a friend at the
snack table. After snack, he walks
slowly around the room and something catches his eye. He had been read a poem the day before and
he sees the illustrated poem with a flower on it sitting on a shelf. Interested, he looks at the words and the
illustration for a while and then goes to the opposite side of the room and
removes a puzzle which illustrates the parts of a flower. This becomes his great work of the
morning. For the rest of the morning,
he works, head bent and focused to trace the flower pieces from the puzzle
onto paper, color the parts and label them.
Groups happen around him, children stop to respectfully watch his
work, but he is fairly oblivious. A
few times, he is not sure of a label and emerges from his work to ask the
directress for help. She redirects him
to an older child who can share his knowledge and they work together for a
moment until he is able to carry on on his own. As he finishes, he looks up as if suddenly
awakened, amazingly refreshed by his work, not tired at all. He puts his paper in his work folder and joins
the whole group meeting which that day is being held to celebrate a friend’s
6th birthday. Following the whole
class meeting, the younger children go outside for free play and then get
picked up while he readies his table for lunch. On
this day, he chooses to sit with one other child and they enjoy their lunches
together. Following lunch and
clean-up, he and his friends go outside to play for a while before starting
the afternoon work cycle. As his
friends return to the class, he spots a worm in the flower bed and sits for a
while watching the worm in the unplanted bed.
This observation of nature is not free play, but rather is part of his
afternoon work cycle. After a while as
the last children have entered and changed their shoes, the directress calls
him in and he goes to the book corner to look at books. Later he might practice reading, receive a
lesson on geography or math, or play the bells. He is again free to choose his activities
and thus he completes his day. Many
parents are curious to know why, despite this rich environment, many of the
children return home and cannot recount what it is they have done in a
day! It is important to realize that
for the very young child, it is difficult to both remember and recount their
day. However, the inability to answer
“what did you do today?” also illustrates the power of the
absorbent mind. Although any one child may have a day as described below, the
simplicity of the day belies the richness of what the child has absorbed from
the environment. Though he/she may
have been working on one piece of material, all around him/her children were
working or quietly conversing, the directress was giving a lesson, a small
group was happening in the corner, and outside the blossoms on the plum tree
began to bloom. The child between
birth and six does not process these events serially as we do. Rather, the entirety of their environment
is captured by the absorbent mind- almost as a photograph. Thus the child working on one piece of
work, though his conscious mind may be incredible focused on that work, is
actually absorbing a wealth of experiences that we cannot even describe- and
neither can the small child. *Montessori
trained teachers are traditionally referred to as “directors” or
“directresses” since “teacher” implies that the adult
is bestowing knowledge on the child.
In the Montessori environment, the trained adult is there to assist
the child in the natural unfolding and development of his self. We therefore use the term
“directress”. 2) What can I
expect my child to know after the three to six program? Children
leave our program after what would traditionally be their Kindergarten
year. They then enter first grade and
they generally excel, occasionally skipping a year if they do not go on to a
Montessori elementary. They are good
readers and competent mathematicians, but more importantly, they love reading
and seeing how numbers fit together in the different operations of
arithmetic. Please see our academic philosophy for more information because our true goal
is to help the child develop into a truly well-rounded person who loves this
wonderful world we live in and is intensely inspired by numbers, music, art,
language, science, and cultural learning.
Beyond the academics there is a higher goal. It is not what they know that interests us,
but who they grow to be. Our children
are beautiful people, confident, kind and loving. They are strong in their beliefs and their
opinions, but respectful and truly interested in other’s opinions as
well. They are passionate about their
work and have developed the self-discipline to be a truly free individual
capable of following that passion. 3) Will my child
become fluent in the second language? When
considering Centennial, it is important to note that we are not a language
school. In fact, while we are
committed to Mandarin and Spanish as two of the major world languages, if we
at some point were unable to find a teacher assistant open to the Montessori
way who spoke those languages, we would never sacrifice the Montessori
process by hiring an inappropriate assistant simply for the particular
language. Language is included in our
program based on Dr. Montessori and other noted experts’ observations
that children under 6 have an incredible powerful ability to absorb language
from their environment. We therefore
provide exposure to the second (or third) language through natural
conversation with an adult with whom they have an emotional connection and to
whom they are exposed each day. This
is in keeping with the major body of research related to second language
learning at a young age and in keeping with Dr. Montessori’s own
writings about the inclusion of a second language. In our program, language is absorbed in
natural interactions. The amount that
any one child absorbs is very individual and parents should not have the expectation
that exposure to a language at school alone will make the child truly
bilingual. The power of their minds is
truly phenomenal and it does happen, but our true goal is to feed the
child’s hunger and love for words and language and to inspire in the
child acceptance of and belonging to the diversity of the world. In essence, the exposure to the second
language is not forced, but as with anything in the Montessori environment,
it is a natural part of the children’s world, there for them to
discover and explore. 4) Do you have
circle time? We
do not begin our day with a whole class “circle time” because the
young child generally enters the classroom with something in mind to do. To require that all children sit for circle
is an imposition by the adult on the child’s natural energies and
interests. Instead, children enter
their classroom and pick individual work or occasionally join a small group
which is already going on. These small
groups of two to eight children (or occasionally more) happen spontaneously
throughout the day. When there are a
number of children wandering who cannot find work or there is something of
interest to the children, one of the assistants or directress will invite two
or three children who are not busy working into a group in a section of the
class. Other children will naturally
watch and may decide to put away their work to join. For instance, one day a child spotted a
bird on a branch outside. This led to
a small group being formed and an assistant took several children out to the
garden to see if they could watch what was happening. They watched the bird build a nest and
later that day, the directress led a group using a puzzle to name the parts
of a bird. The activity for these
small groups can be centered around a story, a craft, songs, cooking,
gardening, grace and courtesy lessons, or any number of interesting
discoveries. Towards
the end of the morning session, we generally, though not every day, have a
whole group meeting during which birthdays are celebrated, holiday
presentations occur, songs are sung, stories told (both oral storytelling by
children or adults, as well as from books), and the directress or children
bring up any community issues which need to be discussed. This is also a wonderful time to share
something that a child has found outside (a bug, special rock, interesting
leaf) or brought from home (favorite music or a special cultural item). A child is always free to leave the group
and keep working or to watch from a distance if they are not yet ready to
participate. Sitting in a group is a
developmental skill which comes at different points for each child and we
respect the point that they are at. By
the crowning year, the children do have the self control to sit for extended
periods of time, to participate gracefully in the group conversation, and to
model the respect of each other that is so important in a large group
meeting. 5) The children
seem to work alone a lot. How do they
develop social skills? Our
children are beautifully confident and social individuals who develop true
respect for others and wonderful relationships. Numerous research studies support our
subjective observations and have consistently found Montessori children to
outperform traditionally schooled peers on every measure of social, academic,
and self-esteem attributes. However,
we do it a bit differently than the popular culture currently suggests. Currently
there is a great pressure on parents to “socialize” their young
children. Both Montessori-based
observations as well as most classical and current psychological research
support the conclusion that children are not truly ready to begin meaningful
social interaction and cooperative play or work before 4.5 or 5 years
old. The interest in social
interactions becomes very noticeable around 4.5 years old, but they are
usually not particularly adept at true collaborative work. With ample exposure, this natural curiosity
blossoms into true social grace and confidence by the start of first
grade. Though there are other reasons
as well, there is no coincidence that 4.5 years old is the age that we
require children to stay full day (until However,
a young child does not want to work with another child. He or she is often annoyed or frustrated if
his individual work is interrupted.
He/she may like to play in the yard with friends, briefly sit with a
friend for snack, or watch another child working, but it is not his/her
deepest desire. Rather, it is a
momentary distraction (with the exception of watching work where it is the
work being done that is satisfying a deep need in the child). This makes sense because it is this
child’s own process of self-formation that is critical to him. He must work on who he is- building a
strong will and sense of self through repetition of work and developing the
self-control to following his own interests before he can incorporate
another’s views and feelings into his work. If we push social interaction too soon, we
encourage the development of an individual who defines himself based on his
interactions with others rather than evaluating those interactions based on
an already strong sense of self. If
you think of an adult who is either socially competent or uneasy, it often
has less to do with the amount of interactions he has had or the opportunity
for social experience and much more to do with his/her own confidence. It is the same, but even more critical for
the developing child. 6) I've heard
Montessori is very strict. Is this true? 7) I've heard
Montessori has too much freedom. Is this true? We
answer these two questions together because they illustrate the two sides of
“limited freedom” that we practice in the Montessori classroom. To understand this concept, it is important
to understand the goal of the development of freedom. The young child is in the process of
creating him/herself and it is their greatest desire to be independent and to
be truly free. However, true freedom
is often misinterpreted to mean a child who acts without restrictions imposed
by an adult or by the community. To
us, this is not only a misunderstanding of freedom, but leaves the child
without the safe guidelines they need in order to understand the world. Rather, the truly free child is one who has
no need for these external restrictions because he has a well developed
internal sense of discipline which makes external restrictions superfluous.
In essence, the truly free child is one who does what is accepted and right
simply because he honestly feels it is the way to be. In this case the child does not need an
adult to tell them how to behave because it would not occur to them to do
anything else. As
beautiful as the truly free child is, it is a process to get there. At first, the child needs fairly strict
limits on their behavior. Within these
limits, they are free- free to choose as long as it is appropriate work that
they have had a lesson on, free to interact as long as they are not
interrupting, free to move about the class as long as they are not running,
etc. This is freedom within
limits. As the child internalizes
these limits and internalizes the abstract concepts behind them (i.e. we do
not touch someone else’s work without permission because we respect
each person in the community and the work that they do, etc.) the external
restrictions become quite unnecessary.
Our children grow in their crowning year in the Children’s House
to capable, confident, and kind individuals who can be completely free to act
according to their own internalized sense of what is appropriate, fair, or
correct. Our specific guidelines are
not necessary because the child has internalized the abstract principles
behind them and simple acts according to their internal guide- a guide which
is much more developed and far reaching than any of our limited
guidelines. At this point, they are
truly free. Because
of the concept of limited freedom, freedom can be misunderstood even by
Montessori schools. As there is no protection
on the use of Montessori, there are schools which simply use the materials,
but do not fully understand the philosophy.
In these cases, the concept of freedom is often the first concept to
be misunderstood and all children are either allowed the unlimited freedom
that our older children may arrive at or they are all given the more
strenuous rules that might suit a young child. These applications of freedom leave no room
for the internalization of discipline and thus both will fail in helping the child
to become truly free. In the one case,
there are no guidelines to point the way for the child. Essentially, there is nothing to
internalize and this leads to chaos.
Contrary to the feelings of many adults, this is not liberating to a
young child, it is frightening. They
want to know what the guidelines are and they want the adults help in
negotiating understanding these guidelines, but then they want to be free to
act within those limits. This is safe
freedom at a young age. Similarly, the
imposition of strict rules which either do not allow any freedom within the
guidelines or which are inappropriate once a child has internalized the
abstract concepts does not allow the child to exercise his own judgment and
thus paralyzes his ability to generalize these rules to other
situations. He feels like he is
trustworthy, yet we do not trust him.
In that case, what is the point of developing self control if it is
not a tool for the child to successfully navigate the world? In our classrooms, as with any aspect of
the Montessori philosophy, freedom is an ever-changing and fluid
concept. Though the guidelines remain
the same for every child, the adult gradually fades into the background as a
reminder of these guidelines as the child’s own self-discipline
develops. Again, this is then the
point of true freedom for the child. 8) There are a
lot of academic materials. Will my child be pushed too hard academically? There
is great concern about pushing a child too hard and it is important to
understand that for us, a child’s play is their work. The work in
the environment is the work that over a hundred years has proven to be
exactly what the child wants to spend his energies on. Please see our Educational
Philosophy for a more detailed explanation. 9) Do you believe
in make-believe or free play? We
do believe in both. It is through
undirected time that the child develops their creativity, lets off excess
energy, experiments with social customs and individual relationships. Free play is an extremely important part of
a child’s day. In fact, it is our greatest desire that when the child
goes home at the end of the day, he is free to create projects for
him/herself, play in the yard or park, bike, skip and run, and enjoy his
world in as natural a way as possible.
We do not recommend that the child at this age participate in classes
after school or too many structured playgroups because we sincerely believe
that school is enough to plant the seeds of the world. Most important at this age is that the
child needs unstructured (that does not mean without guidelines to protect
him or others he plays with) time to explore and to create. Left
to their own devices, the child will often engage in some degree of fantasy
play, but this play is very different than what parents often imagine. Most parents love the idea of make-believe
because they remember their fantasy games from childhood (princesses,
dragons, and grand adventures) and it is a beautifully romantic memory. However, most of an adult’s memories
are actually from the elementary years or perhaps very late primary (3-6 yrs)
years. The type of fantasy play that
we remember is very appropriate for the elementary child who understands
reality and now becomes intensely interested in the difference between reality
and fantasy. Myths, legends, simple
science fiction and fantasy worlds take on a wonderfully powerful role in the
elementary child’s quest to understand his complex world. The
child in the first plane of development, however, is not particularly interested
in fantasy (unless they have had a strong influence from an older sibling or
popular media). This child wants to
understand what is real and wants to work on real things. Most often, if given a choice between real
activities and fantasy play, the child will choose the real activity. How often does your child hang about your
legs as you cook dinner? That little
child may be surrounded by all the toys in the world and many of them
visually begging the child into a fantasy world of play, but the child
remains at your legs. “Let me
see! Let me do! Let me
help!” He/she wants real work
and in our classroom, we are thrilled to fill that deep desire. We do not have a pretend kitchen for them
to play in because we have a real kitchen where they cut, chop, stir, bake,
and pour real food. They wash their
plates in soapy water and set their tables for snack- and they do so with
great joy. We do not have a dress-up
corner because our children take their own shoes on and off, change clothes
when something is wet or dirty, and help other children with any fastenings
on aprons or clothes that they cannot manage.
If they have the desire to work on a fastening, they do so with the
dressing frames which isolate the actual fastening they are interested in
mastering. For the most part, the
dress-up corner is not attractive to the 3 year old because it is
make-believe (children have no need of costumes to role play- their minds are
more than powerful to make up for the lack of a costume), but because it is
fun to work out how to put everything on.
How often do you find the child dressed up only to change clothes two
seconds after? They are interested in
the process- not the end result. That
is not to say at all that the child under six has no desire to play make-believe. They do and we do honor that desire in the
child just as we honor all of the special aspects of this plane of
development. Both our morning and full
day program have periods set aside for unstructured outdoor play and during
this time the older children do engage in make-believe, but it is not
fantasy-based make-believe. Most of
the natural play they do is to change real things into other real things in
order to better understand the world they live in. A rock outside becomes a bun and the hollow
of the tree is an oven. One little
girl becomes the mommy in a game and the other two the children. That “mommy” has the
opportunity to experiment with imposing different rules, with giving comfort
to a hurt “child”, with guiding other children. The “children” have the
opportunity to replay a conflict they’ve had or have witnessed- to
figure out how to work it out without threatening anyone’s true
feelings. If you actually watch these interactions
in a natural setting without the influence of popular culture or characters,
the children are very interested in make-believe, but at this age it is very
much reality-based make-believe. That
said, our periods are limited because we believe that most of this unstructured
free play is best done at home where your own guidelines can be enforced,
where the family values are sorted out by the child, and where they have an
extensive expanse of time to get immersed in their activities- whether tasks
of daily living or make-believe. Also,
the child is just becoming competent in social situations and it is unfair to
expect the child to navigate a long period of free play with many other
children without overtaxing their developing self control. 10) Why don't you
offer an extended day care or nap time for the younger children? Over
almost 20 years of teaching experience, we have found that it is extremely
difficult for a child under 6 to cope with an extended day program. We realize that it is very controversial to
be so direct about after-care programs, but we do have seen consistent
behavioral issues in children who stay until evening at school. We would not
be doing our work in service to the child if we were not honest about that. While
our school is as home-like as we can make it and the children and directresses
form a tight and loving community, it is not the same as home and a child of
this age still needs the one on one (or one on two, three or four with
siblings) that home life in the afternoon and evenings provide. The home provides a beautiful counterbalance
to school. Everything is child-sized,
child directed, and child-centered.
Although this is important for the developing child so that he/she is
not continually frustrated in his attempts to be independent, it is equally
important that the child learn to live in a family community where everyone
sacrifices and compromises so that each person’s needs are met. When the home can be consistent with the
aim of supporting the child’s independence, the individual nurturing
that takes place on such an intimate level is simply critical for the child
to develop into a strong and confident individual. We
do understand the financial realities of working parents and we do know that
a nanny in the home is not always possible.
Though being at home with mom or dad is wonderful, it is not a reality
for everyone. We strongly encourage
parents to use our yahoo group parent list or our student contact list to
meet each other and perhaps work out a nanny-share arrangement or some other
situation where the child can at least have a smaller caregiver-child ratio
and be in a real home. 11) Why is your
Children’s House program five days a week? Montessori
educators over 100 years have found that the consistency of the five day
program is critical to the development of the child. Children at this age love order and
routine. They gain great confidence
from knowing what they are going to do that day and how it is to be done. By having a five day program, the
guidelines, schedule and expectations are consistent for the child, the
community of children is stable, and the flow of the week is peaceful. That said, we do offer the four day program
for toddlers in recognition of the importance of home life at this age and
recognizing that this is often the only chance for one-on-one time with
parents without other siblings which is a wonderful opportunity for the
child. It is, however, a compromise
which does slightly affect the consistency for the child. At this young age, we feel it is on balance
worth it for parents who can spend that time. 12) What is your
recommendation for my toddler? |
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We
strongly believe that the child between three and six benefits incredibly
from the Montessori program and truly needs to be in an environment which can
cater to his needs and provide materials that will capture his energies. The three to six year old has spent the
last three years trying to understand his/her home and those closest to
him/her and it is developmentally appropriate for the child to step out and
begin the exploration of a wider world. The
toddler between two and three is in a different stage. Some children at this age are also showing
a strong developmental need to be out in the world. The toddler program is a wonderful place
for these children to begin their first steps out of the home in a nurturing
setting with a high teacher student ratio and a small social group. For the most part though, the child between
two and three is really still content with the smaller world of home and
daily life. There is intense societal
pressure to “socialize” the child, but really this should not be
your aim in starting the toddler program.
Most toddlers would do quite well at home if parents are willing to
truly include them in the real activities they crave to experience: cutting
bananas, unloading the dishwasher, digging in the garden, exploring music,
taking long walks, feeling different textures, etc. For these children, if the parent can be
truly there and truly engaged in these very simple activities, the child of
this age would honestly be best occupied at home. He does not need to be taken to class after
class to be “socialized”, but simply allowed to truly participate
in real life. This is difficult and
unrealistic for many families due to siblings, work, or preparation of
materials. For these children, the
toddler program is a great start, but we still encourage you to try as much
as possible to also resist pressures to put them in additional classes and
simply try to “help them to do
it for themselves” at home. We
promise that this leads to the true foundation of a competent social child,
and further, to a child who is a grounded and confident individual in every
aspect of life. |
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