If you think of school as a place in which children are all lined up in their desks or sitting around the same circle, staring ahead at…
For Parents
Freedom of Choice in the Third Plane: 12-18
In some ways, protecting the Freedom of Choice for learners in the Third Plane of development can be the most stressful for parents and…
Freedom of Choice in the Second Plane
If we understand the Freedom of Choice to expand in 3-6 from a child’s agency over their own basic needs to include authority over their…
Freedom of Choice in the First Plane, 3-6
While the protected Freedom of Choice for Infants and Toddlers tends mostly to lie in a preservation of the child’s natural patterns for…
Freedom of Choice in the First Plane, 0-3
One of Montessori’s “Four Freedoms,” is the Freedom of Choice, the agency of the individual that is protected in our prepared…
Montessori Monday: The Knobless Cylinders
A companion material to the Knobbed Cylinders, the Knobless Cylinders offer children extended practice with the relationships of height,…
Limits and Freedoms
Montessorians often use the language of, “Freedom with limits,” to describe the open ended choice enjoyed by children in these…
Montessori and Dramatic Play
When you observe in a Montessori classroom, you may be just as aware of what you don’t see as what you do. Where is the dress-up box?…
The Arts in the Montessori Classroom
History demonstrates an ongoing tension between back-to-basics school reform and models that focus on the “whole child,” like Montessori,…
The Capacity to be Puzzled: Creativity and Montessori
‘What are the conditions of the creative attitude, of seeing and responding, of being aware and being sensitive to what one is aware of?…