Three Voices Explored: Teacher Tom, Alison Gopnik, Alfie Kohn By Joanna Ainsworth For this month’s blog I have been invited to write about Teacher Tom, Alison Gopnik, Alfie Kohn – just three voices in the vast mele participating in the conversation about early childhood education and care. It is noisy out there. Sometimes it is … Continue reading Protecting Childhood

In the early years we have grappled with challenging stereotypes for as long as I have been a Montessori Teacher.  We have encountered it in Montessori’s own writing, which is very much the product of her day.   We have prepared policies and developed procedures to tackle prejudice and challenge our own biases – but  I … Continue reading Challenging stereotypes – so many questions!

Freud, Erikson and Jung By Barbara Isaacs At the start of 2023, I have reflected again on theories  of child development, and how they have influenced our understanding of children through the 20th Century.  Now almost quarter of a century in into the new millennium, Montessori Musings offers our community a glimpse at these key … Continue reading Child Development Meets Montessori

By Diana Bradley, Executive Director for the Montessori Society AMI (UK) Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better. Maya Angelou Every adult in a Montessori environment has the role of teacher put on them - they are required to know how to support children to follow … Continue reading Empowering Your Team To Grow

By Joanna ‘All grown-ups were once children... but only few of them remember it’ (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 1948) The environment. The deeply supportive, nurturing prepared environment of the Montessori classroom where human and more-than-human hierarchies are flattened, where matter most definitely matters and where a culture of freedoms and respect affords all children the time-space … Continue reading Piaget and Vygotsky

If we wish to bring to the children knowledge of the real and material world, nothing can be more significant and accurate than the image of the tree that is human solidarity, rooted in a distant past and extending its branches towards eternity, while we live the infinitesimal second allotted to human life. Maria Montessori, … Continue reading “Our House is on Fire”*

Urie Bronfenbrenner and Abraham Maslow By Joanna Ainsworth Ecological Systems Theory, Bioecological Systems Theory and the Hierarchy of Needs I struggled for some time with this topic before starting to write, digging fretfully around the edges. I had hoped to unpack, unpick, and unravel, but, instead, I was met with an impenetrable wall. We know … Continue reading Child Development Meets Montessori

In our last webinar of this academic year, we will consider Marlene Barron’s article, ‘Maria Montessori and the Postmodern World’, from the Summer 2002 Summer issue of Montessori Life, in which she reflected on Montessori education for a post-modern world. At the time of its publication, I was so excited by its content and was … Continue reading Preparing the children of today…

By Annamaria Guild, Owner and Founder, The Under Threes For Montessorians, the word ‘real’ should not be a new aspect of our teaching as using ‘real’ experiences and ‘real’ objects to aid children’s learning is one of the main principles of the authentic Montessori pedagogy. However, during my travels and visits to early years settings, … Continue reading The ‘real’ needs of the Under Threes

Whilst Montessori declares normalisation to be one of the key goals of her pedagogy, many of us either avoid the use of the term because of its negative connotations, or use it as a tool for covert behaviour and learning assessment of the child’s progress in our settings.  Neither one of these approaches seems comfortable … Continue reading What Do We Understand by Normalisation?