©Ryan Katz How Can We Help Our Children to Think? Dr. Montessori first observed the ability to reason in an infant at 3 weeks old. This is an important observation because it leads one to contemplate what it is that she was observing to say that the infant was using the reasoning mind? Firstly, let us identify what it means to reason. Reason is defined as the power of comprehending, inferring, or thinking especially in orderly rational ways. The ability to reason is not a skill but a development. The frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex is the part of the brain that deals with the function of reason. This part of the brain is also involved in language and emotion. Rather than bog you down with science, let’s just make the connection between reason and language. It would be easily assumable to consider that reason needs language to develop. How? This language can be an internal dialog or an external dialog with you, the parent. Early on, during the child’s life, it is the role of the adult to help develop reasoning by offering an environment rich in language. Let’s imagine that we are speaking to an infant, that is a child that is yet to be walking. If we want the infant to develop language, we do not teach but model by using a rich and varied language. “Look, at that leaf it is beautiful, its shape is oval, and it is a lovely green. I would probably call that color, lime green.” As parents we provide an environment rich in language if we want our children to absorb a varied vocabulary. Now, what about reason? For the infant, we again must aid the development by supplementing our ability as an adult to reason. In this way, we aid reasoning capabilities in the child. “Look at this leaf on the ground. I wonder where it came from? Hmm, it looks like the same leaf as the leaves on that tree right there. Therefore I think that it came from that tree.” Now, this may seem strange but in this way, we as adults consciously aid the child in developing the reasoning mind. Young children under three are unconsciously absorbing their environment and this also includes reasoning. Sometimes you may even be unaware that you are reasoning but your child is certainly absorbing those reasoning experiences. Imagine that you go to the bakery, and they are out of the bread you want, you start a conversation with the baker and explain that you need bread for a dinner party. With the baker you may reason out what bread you will get and why it will be sufficient. If your child is with you, they will absorb it. This happens all the time. In the home and outside the home. If your child is within earshot they will absorb it. Now let’s move to the 3-6 child, this is the child that possesses the conscious absorbent mind. What that means is that children at this age are moving into consciousness. For example if we take the concept of time, they are becoming more cognizant of actual time. They begin to have the concepts of tomorrow, yesterday, this weekend, or this year. You have to be a somewhat conscious being to understand these concepts. The 3-6 year old is a lover of questions. They are at times, it seems, relentlessly posing questions to the adults. What is this? What is that? How come? Why? Again we must continue to give the child of this age an environment rich in language. We must answer their questions because not only does it stimulate development and build the intellect but it is also emotional satisfying. Yet what about reasoning? How do we support the development of reasoning in this child? We need to remember that children and even adolescents are developing their ability to reason and that all adults in their lives have an impact on the outcome of reasoning power. At some point during the 3-6 age period, the adult needs to actively call upon the child’s ability to reason. Rather than just continue to answer those relentless questions, occasionally, it is necessary to invoke reasoning. So, if this child asks you a question, you will have to see if it is an opportunity for your child to reason out the answer for themselves. Maybe your child might ask, “Is it going to rain today?” Rather than just give the answer right away, return the question with another question, “Do you think that it is going to rain today?’ When your child answers, you will need to follow that up with another question because most likely they will respond with a yes or a no. “Why do you think it is not going to rain?” Help your child with the reason. “I agree. Look at the sky. It is so blue. There is not a cloud in the sky.” With a young child, you will need to occasionally do this in order to help your child build reasoning. However avoid asking the child all the time as this will discourage your child. If you do this then ultimately they will shut down and not be open to reason. Moderation is th key. What about the elementary child? The elementary child is in a sort of golden age for reasoning. By the time the child is 7, the brain enters a new stage of development as frontal and temporal lobes significantly increase. Between 7 and 9, children can think more abstractly and symbolically, understand parts of concepts before knowing the whole, understand the feelings of others, think more complexly, and participate in inductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning is the use of reason to draw conclusions on observed patterns. “Every morning at school we sing therefore this morning I will probably sing.” Deductive reasoning is used in the scientific method. “All birds lay eggs. A robin is a bird therefore a robin lays eggs.” Practically speaking, we must challenge the elementary child to constantly use their reasoning capabilities. This child will apply reason to nearly everything they do. Reason can be used for mathematics or it can be used to test limits and understand social norms. “It’s time to go to bed.” “Yeah but last night I went to bed 15 minutes early, so tonight I can stay up 15 minutes later.” It is your position, as the parent, to decide if the reasoning that your child uses is logical or not. It may very well be logical but it might be a use of reason that you may consider to be inappropriate, unjust, or manipulative. A discussion is necessary in these situations. However, the vast amount of time, this is a child that wants to know the reason behind things and you as the adult must create an environment rich in the opportunities to express the reasoning power of the child. Children need to think for themselves. This is an important aspect to being in possession of a strong intellect. The ability to reason helps with nearly all aspects to life from mathematics to morality. One might clearly see why reasoning might help with mathematics but what about morality? If we use morality without reasoning then our ability to empathize without fairness can lead to nepotism or justified moral retaliation such as road rage. “He cut me off, now I will show him a lesson!” Just like language we cannot make a child speak but we can certainly have an impact on the peripheral experiences of our children. We need to give our children rich experiences in the use of reason with morality. Moral development is related to cognitive development. A child has different stages of the ability to moralize and reason depending on their maturity. We must therefore play an active role in the experience that our children are receiving. Let us end with mathematics and reasoning. Most mathematicians say that mathematical truths already exist and are ready for discovery. We all have a mathematical mind, yet it is a rudimentary mind, therefore we must offer it rich experiences in order to build up its prowess. These experiences build up our ability to reason mathematically. Once mathematically reasoning has been developed, so too does the possibility of mathematical discoveries. We need to offer our children rich experiences to develop their ability to reason and this certainly warrants a participation on the parents part. ©Ryan Katz

What should one think about when they think about cooperation, particular in reference to our own children inside Montessori Schools?  Very often, in a Montessori context, one needs to think about the larger picture.  Firstly, this larger picture is the child as a human being.  From there we move to the collectivity of human nature.  Why?  Montessori education derives its method from anthropologic roots along with the biology and psychology of the child therefore in order to understand certain concepts necessitates the deliberation of human evolution.  Cooperation is a hallmark of the human experience.  Human beings began cooperating a very long time ago, think at least 200,000 years ago with the emergence of our species.  Other hominids cooperated and even other animals of the animal kingdom are known to cooperate as well.  When one thinks about cooperation, sometimes certain concepts such as altruism arise.  Altruism is individual behavior that benefits others but not the individual itself.  Yet humans are not the only species capable of altruistic behavior as the primatologist Frans de Waal’s research on chimpanzees has shown.  So what is cooperation?  Cooperation is a somewhat complex topic as it requires the understanding of concepts such as kin selection, in-group, out-group, reciprocity,  intention, and joint intentionality.  So how then can we understand cooperation in the context of either parent-child or teacher-child relationships?  Again, we must look towards human evolution to give insight.  Although other hominids cooperated, no other species in the history of earth has cooperated in the same way that homo sapiens have.  How do we know this?  Look around, our very own town has a town hall that governs, giving us access to water, electricity, or roadways.  Our houses are built along streets that form neighborhoods and have street signs denoting where we are.  Our town hall is governed by the capital and in the capital stand astonishing edifices like Notre Dame or the Eiffel Tower.  How is this even possible?  It is through the cooperation of human beings that this has become a reality.  And not only that but it has been a cooperation passed along through generations of people.  Notre Dame took 182 years to build, no human being lives that long but cooperation amongst human beings is everlasting.  One must view the child or their own child in this aspect of human cooperation.  When they grow to become adults they will join into becoming an active contributor in the creation of what Dr. Montessori called supra-nature.  Supra-nature is what was described above, the network of roads, buildings, and etc… all built by humans on top of nature.  Yet children, are in the midst of development, their ‘job,’ is to develop.  Cooperation in all of its complexity cannot necessarily be expected in the same way that one might demand it of an adult.  Therefore one must regard cooperation in children as something different, something that is developing.  Yet we should not as adults give children a carte blanche to be non-cooperative.  It is well known that reading to infants, develops language skills yet when we read to infants it can appear as if nothing is being absorbed but rest assured, it is.  Children need to be encouraged to demonstrate cooperative behavior as well as see adults modeling cooperative behavior. The social neuroscientist Matthew D. Lieberman called humans, “super cooperators” and this has resulted in the extraordinary feat of building up human culture (supra-nature).  Where do children stand in this aspect to human culture?  Again, they are in the midst of development and are not yet at the level of being super cooperators.  The younger they are the less development they have.  It is not until the 3rd plane of development (12-18) that we begin to see the first real forays into the type of cooperation that humans are truly capable of.  At this age, Dr. Montessori spoke of social experiences that construct the individual’s consciousness.  In other words, the individual adolescence becomes bonded to society.  Children of the elementary age and children of the first plane (0-6) are still experiencing cooperation, they are just experiencing it in a different manner than the adolescent.  However, there is one key that makes Montessori Education uniquely different from all other forms of education and that is its approach to cooperation.  Dr.  Montessori said this, “The first reform in education must be to offer a wider environment and to multiply the possibilities of association and of activity.”  In order to understand what she means one must examine both association and activity to arrive at a sense of what one really means by cooperation in the childhood context.  Association is driven by the human tendency of communication.  This is the tendency to talk with others, to tell others about stuff.  Public schools suppress this characteristic of the child.  Children want to associate with others because they have this tendency to want to communicate with others.  The other aspect is activity.  In Montessori Education, one recognizes the spontaneous activity as being a cornerstone of human behavior.  Spontaneous activity is the manifestation of internal energies that push development toward optimization.  It is not, a child spontaneously running through the aisles of the grocery store.   In regards to activity and cooperation, Dr. Montessori was very clear when she said, “It was always realized that anyone who does work that is too hard must join together with others; but we saw among small children that even to be able to understand it is necessary to join with others.”  This gives one a real clue to cooperation in children under six.  In order to cooperate they must have some real understanding of the activity (the work).  If they do not, cooperation just becomes chatter.  The child from the age of 0- 6, is a child that is tasked with acquisition; acquisition of movement, acquisition of language to name but two and acquisition requires coordination.  Coordination is the organization of the different elements of a complex body or activity so as to enable them to work together effectively.  The child must be coordinating mind, body, and soul in order to acquire development.  If this is the case then one can easily understand that individual work lends itself better to development.  The younger the child is, the more intense the acquisitions are, think language or walking.  For the 3-6 child, there are always opportunities to cooperate, for the younger child this may be having a conversation while snacking.  Yet one mustn’t forget that children are still acquiring conversational skills.  Often they simply talk over each other or change subjects rapidly.  So, it is not a far stretch to see how young children working on mathematics can entirely forget the actual activity and be absorbed in conversation but this is not necessarily good.  In order to truly work on mathematics together, each child must have a certain level of understanding of how to do the activity, otherwise it devolves rather than evolves.  Children that are unable to work with others at this stage require more time working individually to develop the acquisition necessary to be able to work with others on an activity.  Individual work helps them acquire the nuts and bolts of how to do an activity, this develops the touchstone of the ability to work.   At the 3-6 level, the child is becoming conscious for the first time.  The earliest memories of the human being are generally from this time period as before the age of three it is unconscious.  It is therefore no coincidence that children after the age of three seek out other children to bond with.  Before the age of three, this is a different type of bonding where it is more closely aligned to a nurturing bond that builds up attachment, an important element for developing healthy human relationships.  After three, children become conscious of others and are attracted to communicating with them but here is the catch, they really do not know how to do it.  If left together with no purposeful activity the potential of development is quickly minimized.  This is the importance of work or activity, it sets children on the path to optimum development.  Children that find themselves crying, being upset, complaining or becoming over emotional over others are children that need to spend more time working individually in order to develop an understanding of the activity.  This also is the same for the child that is the instigator.  Generally, however, these experiences are all part of the development of cooperation.  Children do need to experience the emotional rollercoaster of social cooperation in order to develop the true sense of what is meant by ‘super cooperators.” And what about the elementary child?  These children know how to hold conversations yet for certain children these conversations become the work.  This is a bad pathway.  Knowledge, particularly in children is directly related to exposure.  The elementary child begins to see the universe in a different light.  Children are capable of developing a relativist type of epistemological understanding.  In other words, they begin to become conscious of the fact that the periphery that is outside of the self is the great source of knowledge.  Therefore those children that allow their tendency of communication to overshadow other tendencies such as abstraction, exploration, imagination, or work are misguided failing to see the periphery as this spring of wealth.   Montessori Education is always built upon the preceding stage of development and for cooperation, again it must be based on the understanding of the activity in order to truly cooperate.  This was the genius of Dr. Montessori, the understanding is not necessarily the abstracting of the concept, for if this was the case there would be no need for work, but in the understanding of the procedure which propels the child to be active.  The procedure leads to the abstraction and this is the reason that Dr. Montessori developed materials to develop abstractions.  The elementary period is the period of life in which the child needs to explore as many concepts as possible.  It is the period of life when the Coriolis Force or suffixes are utterly fascinating.  This gives children a deep knowledge that will become the foundation for all the following perods of life.   Again, cooperation does not mean conversation.  Cooperation means activity, activity that leads to development.  Elementary children want to collaborate and collaboration is the action of working with someone to produce or create something.  The elementary child needs to be interacting with others because this is the child that has become increasingly cognizant of the larger society, comprehending how many persons work together to create a functioning society.  It is the first time in a human being’s life that they become bound by the dependency of the work of others.  Yet if one examines human history, one can see that collaboration can also be negative and that the machine of society can be distorted to create evil.  The elementary child naturally wishes to work with her peers and the overwhelming majority of this time must be free from competition and possess an authentic purpose.  This purpose is toiling to understand the workings of the activity at hand.  The wealth of subject matter inside an elementary environment is remarkable but if the children are not active, then it gathers dust.   It is not solely the responsibility of the school to guide children but also that of the parent and other adults.  Adults can support children not necessarily by directly asking children if they understand a particular concept or abstraction but listening and circling through the different subjects.  The subjects in elementary are language, geometry, mathematics, history, music, geography, and biology.  “Hey, what are working on in biology?”  You will know if you begin to hear the same things over and over that your child has become a victim to his/her tendency of communication.  The importance of finding purposeful activity is also the responsibility of the elementary child and responsibility is an important tool for a successful adulthood.    Lastly, it is important to state that other forms of education are insufficient for children because they rely on the child being dependent of the adult.  This format is a teacher/animator giving children a directive activity, wherein the children all learn or do the same activity at the same time.  This tears the nature of the individual apart because it stunts the ability of the individual to spontaneously cooperate which, is necessary to realize the optimal potential to become a super cooperator.  Children need their peers in order to develop cooperative skills and an over dependency on the adult leaves this potentiality inert.  Ryan   --

Now that we have caught your attention with this title, we would like to remove the word difficult from the word child.  Difficulty is not the result of the child, but rather of his or her environment.  As a parent, you would be wise to examine your home situation in relation to your child.  The concept of the “difficult child” is usually situation-related.  Is your child “difficult” because he hasn't slept enough?  Not eating enough?  We also need to look at stimulation.  Is your child stimulated at home?  What we mean by this is whether your child uses his hands.  The more your child uses his hands, the more choices he can express.  By making choices, children express their desires.  Once your child has expressed his desire, he can start using his hands to work.  Work will be expressed through the use of the hands, as these are a direct link with the mind.  The mind is the concept of intellect, feelings, reasoning, consciousness, unconsciousness, memory, attention span and will.  When your children work with the hand, they not only stimulate all these concepts, they also express their individuality, adapt to their environment and connect with other human beings.  The hand is also linked not only to intelligence but also to freedom, because when a child doesn't use his hand enough, he disobeys.  Simple questions to ask yourself are: “Am I providing enough activity for my child's hands?  Does my child express his desire through the use of his hands?" “. ..A child's intelligence can develop to a certain level without the help of his hand.  But if it develops with his hand, then the level it reaches is higher, and the child's character is stronger... In my experience, if, for particular reasons, a child has not been able to use his hands, his character remains at a low stage of formation: he is unable to obey, has no initiative and seems lazy and sa d .” Dr. Montessori,  AM Ryan

Time is an abstract concept, difficult to define, yet it gives rhythm to our lives: the before, the during and the after. Human beings are born into the present, and only begin to understand the before and after as they go through their daily experiences. These before and after experiences define their present, which in turn define their after, and become their before. It's a continuous cycle that never stops, and is in perpetual change, in perpetual motion. If the present of your experiences with your child is what defines the future of your experiences with your child, how would you like to define your present? What future experiences are you leading your child towards? What do you want to guide your relationship with your child towards? Children depend on time far more than we realize most of the time. They depend on the way we structure time for them, with them, so that they can enjoy the present without losing sight of the future, while at the same time remembering the past, in order to correct bad times and build better ones.  The routines, limits and constants we create to accompany our child's every moment are essential to their self-building. So, let's take a moment to observe and analyze their temporal and physical environment: do our children benefit from an organized and structured environment that allows them to safely carry out their child's work: building themselves through the work of their hands, experimenting - sensorially in the case of the little ones, intellectually in the case of the older ones - under the watchful eye of the adults around them?  Do they have opportunities to observe, verbalize and seek to understand the world around them through the rhythm of the week, seasons, holidays, days of the week, months of the year, passing hours, and history for older children?  In our environments, time sometimes stands still, the time of a lively, playful discussion overheard between two 9-year-old students, who are discussing the relationship between the future tense and the past tense. It stops when we have 3 students in their third year at the children's house, who are now really at home, after all this time spent in the environment and who, animated by a real knowledge of almost all the material in the classroom, continue to explore and discover this material in a new light: during work with solids they realized that many of the materials and therefore objects around them were cubes, spheres, cylinders, pyramids, prisms! What a joy for them to make the connection between this abstraction made concrete, these abstract notions linked to their everyday sensorial experiences. Just the time for a three-way conversation, an encounter and the fruit of months and months of work with the material, each at their own pace. An abstract notion understood and internalized for life. This is what your children do in their own environment. Ludmila

Maintenant que nous avons attiré votre attention avec ce titre, nous aimerions tout de suite enlever le mot difficile du mot enfant.  La difficulté n'est pas le résultat de l'enfant mais plutôt de son environnement.  En tant que parent, il serait sage d'examiner la situation de votre foyer par rapport à votre enfant.  Le concept de "l'enfant difficile" est généralement lié à la situation. Votre enfant est-il "difficile" parce qu'il n'a pas assez dormi ?  N'a pas assez mangé ?  Il faut également se pencher sur la stimulation.  Votre enfant est-il stimulé à la maison ?  Ce que nous entendons par là, c'est si votre enfant utilise ses mains.  Plus votre enfant utilise ses mains, plus il peut exprimer des choix.  En faisant des choix, l'enfant exprime son désir.  Une fois que l'enfant a manifesté son désir, il peut commencer à utiliser ses mains pour travailler.  Le travail sera exprimé par l'utilisation des mains, car celles-ci sont un lien direct avec l'esprit.  L'esprit est le concept de l'intellect, des sentiments, du raisonnement, de la conscience, de l'inconscience, de la mémoire, des capacités d'attention et de la volonté.  Lorsque vos enfants travaillent avec la main, non seulement ils stimulent tous ces concepts, mais ils expriment leur individualité, ils s'adaptent à leur environnement et ils se lient à d'autres êtres humains.  La main est également liée non seulement à l'intelligence mais aussi à la liberté, car lorsqu'un enfant n'utilise pas suffisamment sa main, il désobéit.  Les questions simples à se poser sont les suivantes : "Est-ce que je fournis suffisamment d'activités pour l'utilisation des mains de mon enfant ?  Mon enfant exprime-t-il son désir à travers l'utilisation de ses mains ? " " ...L'intelligence de l'enfant peut se développer jusqu'à un certain niveau sans l'aide de sa main.  Mais si elle se développe avec sa main, alors le niveau qu'elle atteint est plus élevé, et le caractère de l'enfant est plus fort... Selon mon expérience, si, pour des raisons particulières, un enfant n'a pas pu utiliser ses mains, son caractère reste à un stade bas de sa formation : il est incapable d'obéir, n'a aucune initiative et semble paresseux et triste ."  Dr. Montessori, EA K 158 Ryan

Le temps est un concept abstrait et difficilement définissable et pourtant il rythme notre vie, l’avant, le pendant et l’après. L’être humain naît dans le présent et ne commence à comprendre l’avant et l’après qu’au fur et à mesure de ses expériences quotidiennes. Ces expériences d’avant et d’après définissent son présent, qui vont ensuite définir son après, et devenir son avant. C’est un cycle continu qui ne s’arrête pas, et qui est en perpétuel changement, en perpétuel mouvement. Si le présent de vos expériences avec votre enfant est ce qui définit le futur de vos expériences avec votre enfant, comment souhaiteriez-vous définir votre présent? Quelles sont les expériences futures vers lesquelles vous menez votre enfant? Vers quoi souhaitez-vous guider la relation que vous avez avec votre enfant? L’enfant dépend du temps bien plus que nous en avons conscience la plupart du temps. Il dépend de la manière dont nous structurons ce temps pour lui, avec lui, afin qu’il puisse profiter de son présent sans que nous perdions de vue son futur, tout en gardant en mémoire son passé, afin de corriger les mauvais temps passés et en constituer des meilleurs. Les routines, les limites, les constances que nous créons pour accompagner chaque instant de notre enfant sont essentielles lors de leur construction du soi. Alors, prenons un moment, et posons-nous afin d’observer et d’analyser leur environnement temporel, et physique: nos enfants bénéficient-ils d’un environnement organisé et structuré qui leur laisse la possibilité d’effectuer en toute sécurité leur travail d’enfant: se construire à l’aide du travail de leurs mains, en effectuant des expériences -sensorielles chez les petits et intellectuelles chez les plus grands -  sous l’oeil avisé des adultes qui les entourent?  Ont-ils des opportunités d’observer, de verbaliser et de chercher à comprendre le monde qui les entoure au travers du rythme de la semaine, des saisons, des fêtes, des jours de la semaine, des mois de l’année, des heures qui passent, et de l’Histoire pour les plus grands?  Dans nos ambiances le temps s’arrête parfois, le temps d’une discussion animée et enjouée entendue entre deux élèves de 9 ans, qui discutent de la relation entre le futur antérieur et le passé composé. Il s’arrête lorsque nous avons 3 élèves en troisième année de maison des enfants, qui sont maintenant réellement chez eux, après tout ce temps passé dans l’ambiance et qui, animés d’une réelle connaissance de la quasi-totalité du matériel dans la classe, continuent d’explorer et de découvrir ce matériel sous un jour nouveau: lors d’un travail avec les solides ils se sont rendus compte que bon nombre de matériel et par conséquent d’objets autour d’eux étaient des cubes, des sphères, des cylindres, des pyramides, des prismes! Quelle joie pour eux de faire le lien entre cette abstraction rendue concrète, ces notions abstraites mises en lien avec leurs expériences sensorielles quotidiennes. Juste le temps d’une conversation à trois, rencontre et fruit de mois et de mois de travail avec le matériel, chacun à son rythme. Notion abstraite comprise et intériorisée à vie. Voilà ce que font vos enfants au sein de leurs ambiances.  Ludmila Ludmila

Are you looking for a nurturing and holistic educational environment for your child? Montessori Hossegor might just be the perfect fit for your family! Located in the serene town of Hossegor, France, Montessori Hossegor is a well-established Montessori school that follows the renowned AMI approach. With a track record of nearly a decade, the school is dedicated to providing a unique and enriching educational experience for children aged 3-12 years old. The AMI approach, developed by educator Maria Montessori, focuses on individualized learning, independence, and hands-on exploration. This methodology helps children develop essential life skills, critical thinking abilities, and a love for learning from an early age. Enrolling your child in an AMI Montessori school like Montessori Hossegor can have numerous benefits. Children learn at their own pace, in a mixed-age environment that promotes collaboration and empathy. The emphasis on practical life skills, sensory learning, and freedom within limits sets a strong foundation for future academic and personal success. At Montessori Hossegor, experienced and trained educators create a supportive and stimulating environment where each child is encouraged to reach their full potential. The school's curriculum covers a wide range of subjects, including language, mathematics, science, cultural studies, and the arts, fostering a well-rounded education. If you are considering Montessori education for your child, now is the perfect time to enroll at Montessori Hossegor. Give your child the gift of a holistic education that nurtures their individuality and sets them on the path to a bright future. Contact Montessori Hossegor today to learn more about their enrollment process and to schedule a visit to experience the AMI Montessori approach firsthand. Your child's educational journey starts here!