Part 2: Why We Forget Our French: Going Beyond Conjugation Tables and Dictations We’ll continue our series of articles on the role of language in the Montessori curriculum by tackling the two big elephants in the room: conjugation and spelling. How many of you have seen the little notes your children bring home, written by other children, and nearly choked on your coffee? We have a little secret to share with you: we don’t correct your children’s written work in the early elementary years. This aligns with the principle of error correction, which comes not from the adult but from the materials. Remember the cylindrical blocks in the 3-6 class? Or the math fingerboards in the 3-6 class? These two materials, like everything else in the classroom, share a common element essential to the method’s effectiveness: they are self-correcting. The child does not need a third party to tell them that they have not done the work correctly; the materials show them this. Either they realize their mistake and correct it, or they do not realize it, meaning they are not yet cognitively ready to correct it. The same applies to spelling and conjugation in elementary school (as well as the rest of their learning). Whether the correction is done kindly or not, correction imposed by a third party remains useless in the long run. If you are familiar with the work of Stanislas Dehaene, Karin James, or Robert Bjork, you know that learning through error is the only kind that is truly lasting and profound. A mistake is not a failure; it is essential information for the brain to recalibrate its predictions. By letting the child correct their own work, we develop their neurological resilience: we only truly learn when our brain processes a discrepancy and manages to resolve it on its own. When we correct a child, we momentarily short-circuit their brain. Not only is immediate correction by the teacher, in this case, unnecessary, but such correction acts as a barrier to creativity and fosters dependence on adults. Do you remember the famous question, “Is my drawing nice?” By age 6 or 7, this becomes: “Is my problem good? Did I spell my word correctly?” The child no longer uses all the resources they possess out of fear of making mistakes. In the case of language, for example, they will start reusing the same words over and over because those are the ones they know how to spell. This applies to all areas: the child will only do what they’ve mastered 100% to be sure they don’t make mistakes. In Montessori, we prefer a child who makes 10 mistakes and discovers 2 on their own, rather than a child who produces perfect work because they were corrected on every line. Imagine if you had stopped your child every time they fell when they first started walking? Did you lecture them on exactly where to place their feet or how to balance better? Did you scold them because they fell too much? And what about riding a bike? Did you spend your time holding the bike steady for your child? Or did your child eventually have to figure it out on their own and fall several times before managing to keep their balance—alone—by letting themselves be guided by bodily and sensory feedback? So why not continue to rely on our children and trust them if we provide them with materials that include built-in corrections?So what are these magical tools that allow your children to learn to write/spell correctly in an independent, self-directed, and creative way? We are a long way from rote memorization (consider the term: our entire school system is geared toward one exam: the baccalaureate. That’s also a topic for another time…) found in other schools where, let’s be realistic, in our society, the schedule is more than just a calendar—it’s a safety net. There’s a deeply ingrained relief in believing that if a child spends hours poring over conjugation tables and preparing for dictations, the knowledge will be acquired. On average, in first, second, and third grade, children have 10 hours of French per week, which drops to 8 hours in fourth and fifth grade and to 5 hours in sixth grade. The total number of weekly class hours in these grades averages 24 hours. This represents nearly 50% of total school learning time devoted to a single subject. This highlights the excessive emphasis placed on pursuing very specific objectives, at the expense of all other knowledge or cultural information, as well as the anxiety associated with it. Experience, real life—and the Montessori method—show that this foundation is, in fact, no foundation at all. Traditional teaching relies on random memorization. While this may seem productive during a Friday test, the long-term reality is far less impressive. Children must prepare for a Friday dictation by studying the same text all week from various angles (vocabulary, grammar, conjugation, spelling) and, much to the delight of most parents, by reviewing it one last time on Thursday evening at home. This certainly prepares children to spell a specially prepared text correctly, but does it really help them understand the mechanics of how language works so that they naturally become good at spelling, even when writing a spontaneous text without prior preparation? Certainly, there is repetition. And Montessori educators value repetition. The more a child repeats with a material, the more they internalize it and can discover the various lessons it contains. The more they repeat, the better they master it, and the more they integrate the concept conveyed by the material. A child who does not repeat remains on the surface, never truly internalizing the new concept. If information is learned without its application in daily life being understood or utilized, the brain classifies it as temporary (Custers, E. J. (2010). “ Long-term retention of basic science knowledge: a review study ”). According to him, to break this pattern, spaced repetition and practical application of the information are required. What does this mean for school-age children? Children must be able to repeat the same activity AND apply it to real life. In Montessori environments, not only are lessons repeatable, but adults encourage children to repeat them over and over again, so that they can fully understand the work—eventually without adult assistance—and discover for themselves the “rules” or information that the materials are meant to convey. Self-discovery takes precedence over simply having information stated by someone else. When children memorize lists of spelling rules as isolated facts, the brain treats them as “junk files”—that is, temporary information to be discarded once the “task” (the exam) is complete. The brain is naturally a pattern-recognition tool, not a recording device. To truly learn, we must stop treating French as a list of rules and start treating it as a living system. In a Montessori environment, we move from passive memorization to active learning and spaced retrieval of information. On the one hand, we do not teach French. We make it available to the children, just like the rest of the subjects in the classroom. Take, for example, one of the first basic rules studied around age 6: singular and plural. The children have access to materials—small labels that they must sort together once the presentation is given: singular words and plural words. Theymust match the articles to the corresponding nouns and then work with them. For each child, the work will be different: copying the words, rearranging the labels many times and reviewing the words, mini quizzes among the children, presenting the words in small booklets, on a poster, etc. We never tell them, “In the plural, you add an ’s.’”, we have a presentation on the plural where the material is set up for them to realise that in the plural, nouns take an ’s’. At some point (fairly quickly), they discover it on their own. We even have a small box with the rule that corresponds to the small box containing the labels. Once the child has discovered the rule, they can extrapolate, go further, and make their own lists of words to put their discovery into practice in a motivated, interested, and immediate way. You can apply this principle to all the language skills we cover in class: spelling rules, verb conjugation, grammar, vocabulary. On the other hand, we don’t ask the children to work exclusively with language or math materials during the morning. We expose them to and encourage them to work with the eight areas of the classroom: language, math, geometry, biology, history, geography, art, and music. They must use language when working on other subjects: they must read, they must write, they must understand what they read, and they must be able to reread their work. Imagine you’re in the middle of a presentation on dinosaurs, and you can’t read your notes—or those written by your classmate: this experience will motivate you, more than any correction or cramming, to write more clearly, to practice reading better, etc.—even at age 6. Our learning tools remain concrete and hands-on, even beyond ages 3–6. We do away with workbooks, replacing them with movable alphabets, manipulative labels, and small instruction cards that are open-ended and endlessly adaptable. We give children the opportunity to learn at different levels: not only visually, but also by using their hearing (they work in groups: they talk to each other, they read words, instructions, and their work aloud), their sense of touch, and their stereognostic sense. This also helps children who still struggle with reading and writing to access a wealth of information and knowledge without creating psychological barriers or undermining their confidence. And if, after a certain age, a child’s brain still cannot grasp certain rules or internalize certain concepts, this is an issue that needs to be addressed separately and discussed with the teachers. Yes, but my child, who is well over 6 years old, keeps forgetting to add the ‘s’ in plurals even though I know they know the rule. Ask yourself: does your child know the rule but forget it in the heat of writing? Did they not pay attention to what they were writing? Simply ask your child to reread their work, and don’t forget to use your sense of humor. When we introduce corrections, we do so by involving the child in the process: we underline a few of the most common mistakes on the page and note in the margin what type of mistake it is (Spelling: look it up in the dictionary or check the rule; Conjugation: check the materials or the Bescherelle, etc.). We teach the child to self-assess. And we do this once the automatic process of writing has been established, once the child is comfortable putting their thoughts into writing in a fluid and spontaneous way, and once the child has enough experience with a good number of spelling and conjugation rules to be able to recall the rules and apply them on their own. When older children start using the Bescherelle, it is not to memorize conjugation tables; rather, it is a tool that allows them to work independently and autonomously, in an intelligent way, using their skills and foundational knowledge to continue improving their work—not because an adult willgrade them, but because they want to produce the best work possible, having understood that their writing reflects who they are to the outside world. The goal of this approach is not merely to pass a dictation on Friday, or for your child to come home with pretty cards bearing identical little messages, all perfectly written because they’ve been reviewed and corrected a good dozen times. It is about shifting the study of the French language from “declarative memory” (knowing that a rule exists) to “procedural memory” (knowing how to use it instinctively). Once again, keep the little notes your children write to you here and there from time to time. Keep them for 2, 3, or 4 years. Then compare them. Note the progress in handwriting and spelling. When a child understands the mechanics of a language, they don’t just memorize a rule; they internalize a skill, much like when they learn to ride a bike. They don’t just learn French; they become French. And they can apply this to any other language they learn later on. Because, just as a newborn is born with the ability to speak any language in the world, a child has the ability to understand how language works.

Part 1: Handwriting: efficiency or art? ©️Ludmila Katz We often hear and believe the myth that “neat handwriting in first grade means that the child is a good student.” " Reality tells us, thanks to neuropsychology, that when a child is forced to focus on the visual aspect of the page, they lose up to 90% of their ability to process the meaning of words. Our Montessori approach is to develop automatism. We prepare the hand as a tool so that when your child writes, they focus on their ideas and not on the ink. The neatest notebook in first grade could actually be a warning sign for your child's future. It is important to differentiate between calligraphic imitation and neural automatism. Through the Montessori method, we develop the child's hand as a weapon of expression so that by the time they reach middle school, they can think and write simultaneously. Not only do we remove the anxiety associated with learning language as we knew it (who among us does not still have cold sweats and scars left by endless hours of forced and repetitive French exercises at school)? We guide children, with fluidity and joy, through a journey that is ultimately much more rigorous, towards true mastery of a language, which leaves no scars but frees your child's mind—and body. In the traditional French system, education is often viewed through the prism of “emptiness,” a very intense cycle of dictations, conjugations, and repetitive exercises. For many of us, this has left “linguistic scars.” We offer a different path: Montessori elementary school is not an escape from these standards, but a much more rigorous path to mastering them. Do you remember what a schedule from first to ninth grade looks like? French and math in the morning, every morning, and a few other subjects here and there in the afternoon, with a little more French thrown in for good measure. A long break in the middle, for what purpose? This break will surely be the subject of another article, but we digress... Let's get back to French. It's not just math that is the bane of former students of our beloved French system. Of course, we were either good students or bad students, or somewhere in between, depending on our level of interest, but let's not lie to ourselves, which of us really enjoyed writing lines of words, endlessly repeating our imposed word lists, and conjugating or rather chanting verbs in all their possible and imaginable conjugations, without ever being able to make the connection between these tasks and our interests or our lives. We are going to paint a very different picture of what your children experience on a daily basis here at Montessori Hossegor. And we hope that by the end of this article, you will want to use Hermione Granger's famous time turner to come back and relive your elementary school years with us! As parents, you often worry that without forced repetitive exercises, your child's handwriting will suffer. So let's take a closer look at the neurological endurance required by the French system. The effect of neatness is achieved, sometimes as early as kindergarten, at the cost of stress that often leads to a “crash” in middle school, when the child is no longer able to think and write simultaneously. In Montessori, we focus on automatism. On the one hand, we refine fine motor control using a wide range of Montessori teaching materials, such as metal inserts, from the age of 3½ or 4, and rough letters. In this way, we develop the muscle memory of the hand before the child is required to write long texts. These “drawings” enable older students to write fluently, like adults, allowing their brains to focus on the content of their ideas rather than on the difficulty of using a pencil or pen. The result? Beyond the immediate neatness acquired at the age of 5-6, your child will be ready to tackle any system by the age of 12. For example, in conventional French schools, the emphasis is on the Seyes grid and the visual “perfection” of the letter. But studies in neuropsychology show that when a child is forced to focus 90% of their brainpower on the mechanics of the letter (staying within the lines), they have 0% left for syntax and meaning. This is why many French students “fail” in middle school. They can write beautifully, but they cannot think and write at the same time. Their writing is a “performative mask” that hides a lack of deep linguistic processing. Visit any French graphotherapist and ask them who their clients are. The vast majority are children from traditional schools who have developed writer's cramp or dysgraphia because they were forced to write too much, too early, with poor pen grip. Forced repetition leads to “hypertonicity”: the child holds the pen like a weapon. At Montessori, we use metal inserts and sandpaper letters to develop “muscle memory” and “pressure control” before the pen even touches the paper. Admittedly, Montessori children's writing may seem “looser” at first, less organized, but it is durable. By the age of 9, they have the ‘stamina’ to write a 5-page report without pain, while conventionally schooled children are often “exhausted” by the act of writing by the age of 10. Do you think computers will replace handwriting? Science says that if you replace the pen with a keyboard, you will damage the reading circuit. Indeed, research by Karin James (Indiana University) shows that when children write by hand, they activate a “reading circuit” in the brain that is completely inactive when they type on a keyboard. In Montessori, we therefore have an advantage: we don't just “write” by hand, we use cursive writing. Neuroscience (e.g., Frontiers in Psychology, 2020) confirms that cursive writing synchronizes brain waves in the theta range, which is the optimal state for memory and encoding new information. A child who types everything on a keyboard has a “more superficial” encoding. The brain of a Montessori child is literally more ‘adult’ in its processing of letters because it has physically constructed them. Since Montessori considers writing to be an extension of thought (the “explosion in writing”), the neural connections are deeper. Research shows that children who learn to write through sensory and self-directed methods retain better spelling memory than those who have learned by rote, even when they eventually switch to typing. Let's return to the famous phrase—or criticism: “But children in public schools—or conventional private schools—have neater notebooks!” Well, yes. Public school children practice calligraphy (drawing). Our students practice coding (thinking). Neatness in a 7-year-old is often a sign of “cognitive inhibition”: they are so afraid of the red pen that they have stopped thinking about words. We develop their “neurological endurance,” which will allow them to write with elegance and depth throughout their lives, and not just to get a gold star on Friday. If you want proof of this, keep the little notes and scraps of paper your child writes and observe the progress and difference in just the first three years of your child's elementary school. At MH, we do not fear the “void” of the French system. We prepare our students to become its leaders. By replacing the anxiety associated with rote learning with sensory mastery and cognitive science, we ensure that when your child makes the transition to another system, they will not merely survive, but thrive. By the end of this series of articles on language, you will understand how your child is not just learning French. They are mastering the art of being French in a globalized world.

©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!