It is very tempting to use rewards and punishments when disciplining your child, especially since they often do work in the short-term. The article below speaks to the downside of using rewards and punishments and the long-term benefits of teaching your child the importance of behaving a certain way because it’s the “right thing to do” rather than for a special treat. Maria Montessori believed that children are by nature intrinsically motivated. They have an inner sense o

Why should we worry about teaching empathy in schools and at home? “Empathy is probably the greatest single gift of our species. We wouldn’t have been able to survive without creating relationships and groups that could function together.” Says Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D, co-author of the book: Born for Love: Why Empathy is Essential- and Endangered. Our world is too often filled with acts of unkindness and cruelty toward one another. As parents and teachers, it is our respon

One of the topics discussed at our peace circle in the beginning of the year is feelings. Young children are learning to recognize other people’s feelings through facial expressions, body language and verbal cues. The children took part in making faces and demonstrating what each feeling might look like. We also discussed what causes us to feel certain ways; sadness about saying good-bye to a parent at drop off or anger about a dispute over a toy. Many of the children shar

This past week we had the chance to take all of the children out to the courtyard behind our playground. This trip gave the group a chance to explore the randomness of the natural landscape and have an entirely new experience together. Children moved across the terrain bright eyed and bushy tailed. Some friends climbed across the big rock and began to scoot down on the slope on the other side. There were lots of pine needles and friends started to see how fun it was to

Our science curriculum begins with an introduction to living and non-living things. The children learn that living things need air, water and food. They practice sorting pictures and objects of living things such as a tree, a cat and a human with non-living things such as a teacup, a dump truck and a block. The children explore the natural environment and discover things like birds and plants are living and things like rocks and dirt are non-living. Next, we explore the conce

“I found 21!” “Is this 72 or 27?” “Where does this number go?” were some of the questions that a group of children asked one another as they explored a new work in the classroom, the 100 Board. This work focuses on ordering numerals 1-100. Observing the children revealed so much about their learning styles, how they cooperate, and how effective multi-age classrooms can be for young learners. The older 5 year-olds confidently took the reigns and taught the 4 year-olds in the g

We recently introduced the compost bin and recycling bin into the classroom. They were introduced as a part of our peace curriculum. We talked about how we need to care for the earth because the earth provides for us and that recycling and composting are two ways to do that. We highlighted what items could go into the compost bin (vegetable and fruit scraps) and what items could go into the recycling bin (paper and cardboard). The day after the presentation, part of snack

During literacy circle, one of the Preschool teachers presented the beloved story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. The book features a caterpillar who eats his way through a wide variety of foods before pupating and emerging as a beautiful butterfly. Instead of reading the book and showing the pictures, though, she told the story out loud with teacher made felt representations of all of the colorful foods. The children participated by helping count out loud as sh

Once a week in the Seedling classroom Klara puts on a puppet show for the children. Puppets are a great way to engage children while teaching social graces and building emotional awareness. Klara uses two puppets, “Whinny” the horse and “Bella” the rabbit. These two characters take care of each other and work through the challenges of their friendship. Asking for a turn, saying please and thank you can be modeled by the puppets. This past week the puppets modeled the emotion