Teaching Montessori in the Home: The Pre-School Years

"What you can teach the child and how best you can teach him depends on what he has learned before and how well he has learned it." -St. Nicholas Training Centre for the Montessori Method of Education, Ltd.

From the Cover: The great, pioneering achievement of Maria Montessori was to recognize the crucial importance of a child's first six years of development. During this time, a child's powers of absorption are at their highest, and lifelong attitudes and patterns of learning are formed. It is for this very sensitive period that the Montessori system of education can provide you, as a parent, with a unique opportunity to help your child develop into a responsible, thinking individual. This bestselling book has already helped thousands of parents connect with their children by introducing them at home to the dynamic Montessori method of education. The techniques, exercises, and easy-to-make Montessori materials presented here instill a sense of discovery and awareness in your child, and serve as an essential foundation for future learning. Covering the pre-school years from ages two to five, the lessons focus on reading and writing, mathematics, sensory awareness, and practical life skills. Updated and revised, this acclaimed guide puts the entire range of Montessori system within your reach, so you can make the most of your child's vital years.

My Review: My wife and I are leaning toward homeschooling our son (neither of us has much faith in the public school system). She is doing most of the research into homeschooling theories and methods, since she would be the one doing the homeschooling, and has looked into such schools of thought as Waldorf and Montessori and others whose names escape me at the moment. She has been leaning towards the Montessori approach for quite some time now, and since our son is approaching his third birthday, she has started doing preschool with him: teaching him letters and numbers and simple motor skills such as grasping and whatnot. She has been using the Montessori method to do this, and since I am home from work and school for the summer she wants me to get involved in his preschool moments. In order to better do this and so that we are both on the same page, my wife asked me to read this book since it is the one she is using to guide her preschool activities for our son.

Hainstock's book is a wonderful guide to introducing education to your child at home. She gives the background and qualifications that made Maria Montessori (the first woman in Italy to receive a doctorate in medicine) the education pioneer and innovator that she was and how you can use Dr. Montessori's methods on a small scale in the home. Now, some of what Hainstock lays out seems either excessively anal (such as blindfolding the child) or obsolete (what child in today's world needs to know how to polish silver or shine shoes) but on the whole, there are some very interesting ideas here that I cannot wait to introduce in his preschooling curriculum. (I am especially jazzed with the concept of the spindle box.) Even more exciting is the fact that Hainstock gives the Reader instructions on how to create each of the necessary materials, rather than having to spend hundreds of dollars to outfit your homeschool.

Our son loves the time he spends in preschool with either my wife or myself and often when we forget to initiate preschool, he will remind us. As a matter of fact, just the other day I was working with him on learning the sounds of the first three letters of the alphabet. I laid out the letter cards with the A, B and C on them, and then took three of his Schleich animals and set them down next to their respective letters: the anteater with the A, the bear with the B and the cow with the C. I then proceeded to explain to him, "A, aah, anteater" and pointed at the A card and the anteater. Next, "B, buh, bear" and I pointed at the B card and the bear. I was about to move on to the C and cow, when he stopped me with "No Daddy." I looked at him, confused and he repeated, "No Daddy. No bear. Polar bear." He then picked up the polar bear figure and putting it back in the bucket with the rest of his Schleich animals and after rummaging around for a while dug out a bull. He looked at me and said "No polar bear, Daddy, bull" and put the bull down next to the B card. "Bull," he said. "Buh, bull" and then sat down and waited for me to move on to the cow and the C card. I had been schooled by my two-and-a-half-year-old son, and couldn't have been prouder.

If you are considering homeschooling (and if you aren't, I highly recommend that you do, public schools just don't cut it anymore, especially after the Bush Administration's "No Child Left Behind" Initiative) then I recommend that you pick up Hainstock's book and study the Montessori method. It's working for our son, and I think your child-who ever he or she may be-would benefit greatly from it too.

This review can also be found at Bryan's Book Blog