Pedagogy Blog

Anxiety is everywhere. But even when we feel it, we can still be of use to the children we're with.

There is a paradigm shifting research article written by Mary Helen Immordino-Yang and colleagues that will rock the world of traditional education. She and her team have organized learning, neurodevelopment, and “nurturing emergent developmental potentials” into five key domains.

1. We Choose, Change, & Embody: Humans are living, dynamic systems with agency
2. Embedded in Culture: Culture frames our behavior and sense of meaning/purpose
3. Group-Dependent: Humans develop with and in response to those around us
4. Interest-Driven: Development is self-organized via environmental engagement/learning (not predetermined by genes)
5. Repetition & Support: Learning is dynamic and context-dependent

Yes, children as young as 2.5 or 3-years-old can joyfully and effortlessly learn phonograms (two letters put together to make a single sound like ch, sh, or ee). We’re not talking about academic preschool here! We’re following the natural interests of the child. Let me show you what I mean.

First, if you prefer to watch videos, we’ve made a whole host of free video lesson plans with details on how to play all of the phonogram games we describe below. We’ll sum up the key ideas and fun activities here.

The ability to hear all the sounds in words (phonemic awareness) is a key step to learning how to read. The young child's brain is primed to do this and we can help by playing a simple little game called the sound game or I Spy. 

There is more than one way to play this game but we like to do it in four steps:

1. Beginning sounds (starting with something super obvious)
2. Beginning and ending sounds
3. Beginning, ending, and middle sounds (in that order)
4. All the sounds in a word (segmenting)

Let me show you what I mean. 

Cultural geography is about more than where things are located on the earth. It's about what life is like all over the world. How do people live? What do we have in common? What is different?

If we really want to show children about life on different continents, we need to show them the SAME kinds of life on each continent. That means we show them a school on every continent, fishing on every continent, a wedding on every continent, a market on every continent, etc. 

Okay, sorting is fun. I admit it. I feel a strange sort of joy when I can organize things. Although I don't always do it in a timely fashion, having those piles of laundry folded Maria-Kondo-style in little piles on my bed gives me such a sense of satisfaction.

And yes, sorting is a key skill children develop in early childhood. Sorting games guide children to group things into categories. In literacy research, we call this developing 'gist.' When we get the gist of something, we understand the basics about how it is connected with other similar concepts. 

Think about all the different collections of things we have in our homes and schools. We have collections of pencils, different types of papers, types of chairs, types of brushes, types of cups, and the list goes on and on. Learning how to organize items by similarities and differences is not only important for cognitive development, but inherently interesting for young children. They want to figure out what goes together.

Here are some of our favorite sorting activities for early childhood. 

A few months back, Julia had the honor of being asked to speak with the Montessori Early Learning Foundation in South Africa. The amazing people that attended lifted Julia up with their positive energy and thoughtful questions. 

Here is a recording of their conversation. They covered some pretty killer topics including:

• Emotions and learning
• Neuroplasticity (use it or lose it)
• Dynamic development of skill/knowledge
• The necessity of processing time
• Executive function development/Freedom with limits
• Stress & resilience
• Protective and risk factors
• Negativity bias and positivity
• Adaptation and social cognition

This talk is worth the time. Get some lemonade, gather a few friends, and enjoy!

Shouldn't we show children the big, cut-out alphabet first? We say no! ⁠

Why? Because whenever we introduce a new activity, we want to isolate the difficulty. If we add one new challenge each time, we increase the chances that the child will succeed. When we use the cut-out alphabets, we're adding in several new difficulties all at once.

When Juneteenth became a US Federal holiday, I wondered if I should add it to the list of Maitri Learning holidays. I had never celebrated Juneteenth and all I knew was that it marked the day when the last slaves (theoretically) were freed in the US. That was back in 1865 in Galveston, Texas, two years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

But, of course, there is what is said and there is what is done. 

Montessori and Juneteenth

A core aspect of the scientific Montessori pedagogy is that we adults are aiding children towards independence. This means we are preparing them for increasing levels of freedom from day one.

But freedom is not willy nilly. It doesn't mean children can do whatever they want with no boundaries. Independence and true freedom must entail responsibility. Slavery, of course, is in direct opposition to these ideals. 

Since I first did my AMI Montessori training, back in the 90s, people have been asking, "But aren't children different today than they were when Maria Montessori first developed her method?" The answer is a resounding YES!  

In some ways, children are most certainly different today than they were even five years ago because we humans are biologically programmed to adapt to our culture: our time, place, and group. But that is actually not news. Humans have been doing this since we became a species. 

What teachers are reporting now is that children seem to have:

• Weaker social skills
• Less language (vocabulary and expressive ability)
• More difficulty regulating their emotions