We may hope for a peaceful future for our children, that they are successful and supported throughout their lives. We may want to protect them from every struggle, to keep them from feeling too sad, to shield them from disappointment. But despite our best intentions, our children will feel sadness. They will have times when things don't go their way, when the world treats them unfairly, when they are excluded, when they fail. If we focus our parenting on averting sadness, we,

Whether this is the first time your child is headed to school or you're preparing for your youngest of six, the first day of school evokes all kinds of emotions. You may be feeling anxious about leaving them, or excited to have a little more space to breathe and think during the day. You may be looking forward to learning more about Montessori or wondering whether all those things you've heard about floor beds and standing diaper changes might just be the most enchanting bott

This is a curious summer. Some children have returned to school after months away. Others are still at home with their families, maybe now for long enough that the regular routine of going to school at all seems long forgotten. While your infant or toddler may be attending school less often, or not at all, there's still so much development happening. As small children move into the dog-days of summer, you may notice that the nostalgia you have for the quiet days of summer vac

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour.” - William Blake I offered this advice originally as an observation on the pace of children's lives in and out of school. Now, we're out of school all the time. It feels like it's even more relevant now. Sometimes we catch it: a child intently staring at a flower bud or absorbed in the way the light comes through the trees above her. We migh

Montessori classrooms for infants and toddlers are designed with four primary areas in mind: sleeping, toileting or diapering, eating and play. These probably feel a lot like the spaces at home- that's by design. We want the infant and toddler communities to meet children's needs in a warm, response, home-like environment. They should feel more like a cozy bedroom than an institutional care center. And mealtimes in these classrooms should also feel like home, with children g

It's a sort of curious activity to watch: a young child, mesmerized, repeatedly transferring some small object from one container to another and back again. Maybe the containers are filled with pom poms or small rubber pellets. Maybe the tongs are large and wooden or maybe they're tiny tweezers. But the child is absorbed, intent on her work, just moving the items back and forth and back again. There's no magic in the material, nothing about it that changes the nature of child

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour.” - William Blake Sometimes we catch it: a child intently staring at a flower bud or absorbed in the way the light comes through the trees above her. We might glance at the backseat to see our children staring thoughtfully out the window, and wonder what wild and beautiful thoughts are going through their minds. Sometimes they share them with

You may have noticed the beautiful Math materials in Montessori early childhood and elementary classrooms. Enticing and elegant, a few minutes of exploration with these materials often help even experienced adults to better understand the relationships and principles of Mathematics. Montessori knew, though, that the appeal of mathematical thinking was evident in infancy and one of the core, universal tendencies of human development. So what does Math look like in a Montessori

Are children naturally empathetic? You may have heard of the phenomenon of infants crying in a nursery, reacting to each other's cries in a sort of snowball of emotional distress. Research shows that newborns, for example, respond more to the cries of other babies then they do to other loud sounds. They respond more to the cries of other babies than they do even to the recorded sound of their own cries. Caregivers often describe this response as evidence of the innate nature

Feeling distracted? Overwhelmed? Like your checklist keeps getting longer but you have less and less time to get it done? In a climate so full of distractions, the ability to concentrate on just one thing at a time, until it is complete or until you choose to move on, is both invaluable and at risk. The same is true for children, whose everyday lives are filled with "stimulation" that's supposed to help them learn or keep them entertained but may, instead, be keeping them fro