Kindergarten is the harvest year for all the planting and intellectual tending that has gone on for the preceding years in preschool. The kindergarten child’s learning explodes into an avalanche of reading and writing and math. All of the earlier preparation (practical life, sensorial) now finds academic outlets. the kindergarten child not only gains a wider breadth of knowledge but a deeper understanding of what she has learned and now is able to use this knowledge to enhance her own intellectual pursuits.

A Montessori education is not just cumulative in its learning; it is exponential in its understanding. The learning that happens in kindergarten is not just adding another year’s knowledge but multiplying what is learned and applying it to what is to come.

It is common for Montessori kindergarten graduates to be able to read well (and write) and to understand math far beyond addition and subtraction all the way to multiplication, division and geometry.

Maybe even more significantly, the lifetime patterns of responsibilty, goal setting, having a work ethic, working through mistakes, inquiry and curiosity are being firmly set. To miss this formative year that sets successful life patterns is to miss the ultimate advantage of this unique preschool experience.

The kindergarten year in a Montessori classroom is also the year of mentoring. It is the year when the five year old is able to really help her classmates. This mentoring year is significant for two reasons. First, when you teach others, you really master the subject for yourself. Second, when you are asked to teach you demonstrate your mastery of the material. It is this mastery that produces the profound feelings of self-confidence and assurance that is the hallmark of Montessori students. Real achievement real achievement demonstrated builds real self-esteem.

Leaving the Montessori program before kindergarten often places a child into an educational setting that is not as advanced; nor one that allows for the initiative that has been carefully cultivated during the earlier preschool years. The child is often introduced to a different curriculum, one that lacks the individual intellectual satisfaction that comes from exploring and discovering the wonderful world of learning found in Montessori.

The essence of successful life is to be able to make wise choices. The Montessori kindergarten student is at a major threshold of exercising that wise decision making power. To lose that opportunity is to lose a significant part of the hard won success or the preceding years.

The great gift of an education is not the accumulation of facts and statistics but the lighting of the fire of learning, discovery and joy. It is a gift that Montessori children have the privilege and pleasure of opening and using for a lifetime.

-Maria Montessori

Peace education is not only to be taught; it is most effective as an ongoing experience in the classroom community. Such a community values each member as a unique individual; it encompasses the habits of respect and fairness; it encourages the peaceful resolution of conflicts; and it gives each persona sense of belonging to a group whose combined efforts can be greater than that of any one member.

What does community mean in a classroom? Like a staff community, a classroom is a group of people who come together for a common purpose in a spirit of helpfulness and harmony. Community, I feel, is a very telling word to describe in a Montessori classroom, and a very useful word to use frequently therein. The word community differs from the word team. In the world of sports, people on a team come together for a common purpose, but the purpose is always to beat or get ahead of an opposing team. Community, on the other hand, is not nourished by competition. Rather it is sustained by cooperation, mutual support and delight in each other’s accomplishments.

-Aline D. Wolf

Peace education is not only to be taught; it is most effective as an ongoing experience in the classroom community. Such a community values each member as a unique individual; it encompasses the habits of respect and fairness; it encourages the peaceful resolution of conflicts; and it gives each person a sense of belonging to a group whose combined efforts can be greater than that of any one member.

What does community mean in a classroom? Like a staff community, a classroom is a group of people who come together for a common purpose in a spirit of helpfulness and harmony. Community, I feel, is a very telling word to describe a Montessori classroom, and a very useful word to use frequently therein. The word community differs from the word team. In the world of sports, people on a team come together for a common purpose, but the purpose is always to beat or get ahead of an opposing team. Community on the other hand , is not nourished by competition. Rather it is sustained by cooperation, mutual support and delight in each other’s accomplishments. – Aline Wolf

“You Will Be Remembered”
For Ms. Jeanette Bostick
An Exuberant, Life-Loving, Soul Extraordinaire”

You will be remembered
Many years from ’92,
When the values of the basics taught
Come clearly into view

When tasks are dealt with comfortably,
With confidence and pride,
A memory of a teacher
With a small child by her side
Will flood the mind with pictures
Of an age and lifetime passed
When someone cared… and someone shared…
The things you taught will last.

Not just words and not just numbers,
But respect for others and the Earth,
Abstract thinking, Wishful wandering,
All of these, you taught their worth.

So today, YOU are our honored,
We PRAISE your dedication,
We RECOGNIZE your sacrifices,
We BOW to your vocation.”

In Nurturing The Spirit by Aline Wolf, she writes, “Peace education is not only to be taught; it is the most effective as an ongoing experience in the classroom community. Such a community values each member as a unique individual; it encompasses the habits of respect and fairness; it encourages the peaceful resolution of conflicts; and it gives each person a sense of belonging to a group whose combined efforts can be greater than of any one member. A classroom is a group of people who come together for a common purpose in a spirit of helpfulness and harmony. Community.”

Although Tyler did not speak that year, he was silently learning reading and counting, and when he was ready, he came out of his shell, slowly gaining confidence.

In Getting Your Money’s Worth: Your Investment in Montessori, Edward Fidellow says about self esteem, “In the classroom, students go from no experience and no power to being able to control themselves and to control the outcome of their activities. These successful experiences build confidence. However, we need to be careful that we do not equate just “success” with building confidence. Success, of a certain kind, does build confidence but easy success is not a confidence builder. Confidence comes, not only from the students’ actual success, but also from the students’ feeling of success.”

Here is Tyler carefully placing a flower branch in a vase during a group activity. Soft music is played and each child patiently waits for their turn to approach and quietly place a branch in the vase.

Today, Tyler has his Masters degree and is a meteorologist.

“A Montessori environment not only encourages initiative but also fosters it. Students do not wait around for the teacher. Students have been taught the general principles and approaches to the material and have been freed to explore and delve into learning. The development of initiative is one of the main differences between being driven to learn and being led, encouraged, and excited to learn.

“The student who begins to use initiative also begins to experience the heady sensation of beginning a project (of choice) and seeing it through to the end. Many of our tasks in life are imposed on us. However, the real passion in life for learning comes when we get to choose our own projects and pour all of our energies into its completion. We are all familiar with how children will work for hours on a project (we are not talking just about school). We see how they pour themselves into a task we may find trivial or even meaningless and how much passion they give to it and how much joy they take from it. They shepherd their project to a joyful completion because it is theirs.”

-Edward Fidellow (Getting Your Money’s Worth: Your Investment in Montessori)