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People sometimes ask me why I call my company Anne Frank Montessori. Let me explain the various reasons, 

from the superficial to the in-depth.

At a superficial level there is a simple connection; Anne Frank was a Dutch girl who attended a Montessori primary school in Amsterdam. I love Anne Frank, I am Dutch and I run Montessori nursery schools in Sussex.

My first nursery, in Horsham, started off in 1996 as Thea's Early Birds Montessori, a name that was difficult to spell, to say and to remember. In 2000 I set up a limited company and changed the name, simply, to Horsham Montessori Ltd. Six years later, when we opened our second nursery school in Southwater, that name was no longer appropriate, as Southwater has its own identity as a village community. We needed a new, non-geographical name that we could use in several places.

By that time I had found that Montessori school owners, myself included, don't tend to be very good at marketing their ethos and values. I also found that many people had heard of the Diary of Anne Frank, about war-time , but very few knew that she had attended a Montessori school. I felt that both Montessori and Anne Frank deserved to be better known.

We know Anne Frank as a child, from her diary that records her two years in hiding in , between the ages of 13 and 15. She was a passionate child and quite a willful teenager. Her parents and sister shared the cramped accommodation with another four people. What shines through from nearly every page of Anne's diary is her love of life, her yearning for freedom and her passionate desire to become a writer.

When the occupants were betrayed, arrested and deported in 1944, Anne's diary stayed behind. It was found by Miep Gies, their close family friend and, much later, published with the consent of the Frank family's sole survivor, Anne's father.

Anne's childhood dream of becoming a successful writer was realised, but only posthumously. Her diary was translated into more than sixty languages and inspired a play and several film versions. Her in is still a thriving school with some 900 pupils.

Anne Frank is a continuing inspiration to me for her optimism and her resilience. Instead of complaining about her lot she wrote:

“The Annex is an ideal place to hide in. It may be damp and lopsided, but there's probably not a more comfortable hiding place in all of . No, in all of .”

She was determined to remain optimistic:

“I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.”

Her ability to focus on a positive goal, to believe in a possible future, to enjoy doing her school homework and to keep writing throughout her time in hiding, I believe, was partly a result of her early Montessori schooling. She attended what is now called the 6th in from age . She shares her Montessori early years education with Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google. They said:

"We both went to Montessori school, and I think it was part of that training of not following rules and orders, being self- motivated, questioning what’s going on in the world, and doing things a little bit different that contributed to our success."

I believe that is true and I believe that it is also true for Anne Frank. I accept that it cannot be proven, but it is my personal belief.

In my thirty-or-so years as a teacher I have not come across any methods or techniques that inspire me as much as Montessori, because the principle of 'Freedom with Respect,' honoured day after day in beautifully prepared Montessori environments, allows children to realise their full potential. Once children have learnt that they can do things at their own pace, that asking questions is a great gift and that thinking outside the box is a valuable skill, then nothing can stop them in realising whatever dream they cherish.

As Anne Frank wrote:

"Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don't know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!"

If a child believes this, that child becomes a confident and motivated learner and, I believe, a power for good and a potential leader.

I finish with two quotes from Anne Frank:

"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before beginning to improve the world."

"I don't want to have lived in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to people, even those I've never met. I want to go on living even after my death! And that's why I'm grateful to God for having given me this gift, which I can use to develop and to express all that's inside me!"

and from Maria Montessori:

“Free the child's potential, and you will transform him into the world”

“We cannot know the consequences of suppressing a child's spontaneity when he is just beginning to be active. We may even suffocate life itself. That humanity which is revealed in all its intellectual splendour during the sweet and tender age of childhood should be respected with a kind of religious veneration. It is like the sun which appears at dawn or a flower just beginning to bloom. Education cannot be effective unless it helps a child to open up himself to life.”

It is my enduring privilege to lead a team of loving, caring, professional people who nurture each child's potential so that they blossom and thrive.

Children just love learning numbers - from counting 'one, two' when changing shoes to joining in with number songs to counting biscuits at snack time.

When they are ready to do some more formal learning, they have special Montessori number rods for counting up to 10 and sandpaper numbers to learn the shapes of the symbols through sight, sound AND touch. Tracing the sandpaper letters lets them feel the numbers so they can start to write them themselves. A tray with sand or salt is great for practice. If they are not happy with the shape they’ve made they just shake it and have another go!

They soon learn that their age is a number, their house has a number, and that count-downs are fun, especially down to their birthday.

Our children's learning is not limited to the classroom. In the garden they play games like hopscotch and boules and they love parking their cars in numbered parking bays. The older children write on printer labels to number the cars, front and back, and sometimes match the car numbers to the bays.

A combination of fun indoor and outdoor learning activities helps to keep the children’s love of learning alive and well!

A few days after I wrote the first part of this blog I was proud to be a witness to one of our girls taking things further on her own initiative. Suddenly, there she was, lying on her tummy on the floor with a big piece of computer paper and a felt tip pen, writing a series of numbers. She worked with deep concentration. When I took a few photos of her and her work she leaned back and stayed relaxed on the floor, with a big happy grin on her face.

Later that afternoon she took her work out into the garden and decided to cut out some of the numbers and sellotape them onto the cars. A small event, but a meaningful culmination of years of indirect preparation. It needed the preparation with the early counting, the number rods, the sandpaper numbers, the outdoor car park and the firm confidence in the child that she has the freedom to take her resources and lie on the floor in the middle of the classroom to do her writing. 

Here's a picture of one of our tractors with one of her numbers. Admittedly the photo was taken the day after and it is not very clear anymore, but the purpose of the exercise is NOT the end result, it's the joy and the learning in the process. The rain and sun washing off the numbers helps, it means we can keep doing this as a meaningful activity on a regular basis!  

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On Monday the children made three snowmen.

Here they are before they were abandoned in favour of a story in our warm & cosy Montessori room.

 

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Inside we had foamy pre-cut snowmen shapes, a box of buttons and glitter, paper & glue. With some black hats the children created these:

 

 The next day we added a few more pompoms, glue, goggly eyes and cotton wool. The children found some sparkly glitter shapes and a few bits and pieces and there you go!

Here's a collection of samples on display:

Tomorrow we'll be back to see what happened to the ice in the bowl that we left outside. It's minus 4 degrees Celcius, very cold for England:)

Frost and ankle-deep snow last year, wind and rain and sunny days in 2012. What will the rest of the year bring? One thing is certain, we will be out there to enjoy it. There's no such thing as unsuitable weather, only unsuitable clothes. If it rains, let's don the wellies, put up the hoods and find those puddles to jump in. If it snows, let's build a snowman or an igloo and feed the hungry birds. If the sun shines there's sand castles to build, and lovely hollow blocks to build bridges, towns, and railways. Care to come and join in?

I never really understood facepainting. I didn't see much of it around where I grew up in the Netherlands, nor did I pay much attention when I did start to see it happening at community events in the UK. I didn't think it was anything special.

That changed a few years ago when I was invited to provide a children's stall at a local event in Horsham Park and I said 'Yes.' I had no experience and neither did the Montessori colleague who was helping me that day. We got some basic equipment and, most importantly, some pictures of painted faces to copy. We got going and we kept going all day long. Much to our surprise the children were delighted, and so were their parents. Not bad for my first experience, at age 48! That same colleague and I did another facepainting stall at an event in Southwater this summer and the children were queuing up.

On the face of it, excuse the pun, facepainting is a common activity, simple and popular. Anyone can do it, but those who are creative tend to do well. I was not prepared, however, for its special magic.

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To paint well, you have to get up close and personal to, in many cases, a complete stranger. For full-face designs this young stranger has to close their eyes and trust your stable hand. When you have just painted the area around the eyes and the child has sat still; when they then open their eyes and look at you, with such trust and vulnerability, that is a very special thing.

It reminded me how precious each child is and how lucky I am that I can give them this simple fleeting gift, enjoyed as much by its giver as by the child who receives it.

What does ‘respectful communication’ mean?
The Australian Early Years curriculum gives some guidelines, specifically:

1. Greet children individually, upon arrival and departure;
2. Listen with attention and respond;
3. Explore each child’s interests and concerns;
4. Model a positive and respectful communication style;
5. Be accessible for a child to initiate contact;
6. Respond to non-verbal cues;
7. Acknowledge and accept a child’s feelings;
8. Respond to a child’s mood;
9. Promote a sense of fun and enjoyment.

Point 4 is the least clear and the most difficult, particularly for people who have not experienced this kind of communication in their own lives. It includes replacing any necessary ‘No’ with a ‘No, thank you.’ It includes consistently replacing ‘Don’t statements’ with ‘Do statements.’ Examples are: avoid saying “Don’t run in the classroom”, “No shouting!” and “Don’t push your friend!” Instead, say something like: “Classroom walking please”, “Inside voices please” and “Please be gentle.” Effective communication gives listeners something to aim for.

Thinking about the children around the child in question, in the example of negative language they hear words like ‘run’, ‘shout’ and ‘push,’ a negative auditory environment. In the positive example they hear ‘walking’, ‘inside voices’ and ‘gentle.’ Seeing that a lot of language processing happens almost unconsciously, the latter phrases encourage the kind of behaviour we would wish to see and the former does not.

More’s the pity that I still occasionally hear reports from parents visiting Early Years settings telling me of children being shouted at across the room. In my view this is noisy, disrespectful, indiscreet and extremely bad modelling. Unless there is real and imminent danger, it should never happen! If nothing else, it inflates the importance of a shout. If there was a really dangerous situation, the child would not listen either (if used to it). In extreme circumstances this could lead to avoidable loss of life! As with adults, children should be criticised in private and praised in public. THAT is respectful communication!

Finally, we have to ask: If this is the behaviour while there is a visitor in the room, what is the behaviour if there are no visitors?

Awe and wonder is part of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) ‘menu’ for young children’s learning in England. So how do children experience this? Well, sometimes it ‘just happens,’ if we let it, but at our Montessori school the kitchen garden is a source of endless inspiration. 

A few days ago a young boy, let’s call him John, was helping us discover what was under some bunched green leaves. He was well impressed to find two big white roots and he and his friends helped to dig out them out. They experienced the whole process: digging up the parsnips, scrubbing them clean, washing and cutting them, arranging them on a baking tray and smelling them all roasting hot from the oven. Finally, having them for a snack.

How’s that for a magical multi-sensory Montessori experience?

 

Leaves next . . . . . . . . :) 

Autumn has come again and another wave of nursery children have moved on to primary school. They leave a big gap as they are missed by the teachers and children they leave behind.

Some parents may worry about the impact of change on their child's social development if a close friend has moved on while their child is still at nursery: “With all these younger children around, will my child get enough attention? Will my child miss old friends? Will they have enough friends the same age or older? If they are with these new, younger children, will their progress be delayed?”

And yes, of course they will miss their friends. It’s difficult to accept change, to accept that they won’t see their precious friends every day anymore, but it’s a natural process that will happen time and again in their lives as they grow up.

Will my child get enough teacher attention?

Younger children are not as independent and will need more help with putting on their coats, washing hands, having snack and many other small tasks. That is an opportunity for the suddenly ‘older child’ to shine. Let’s assume the ‘older child’ in this story is a girl. She knows where things are kept and how things are done. Soon she realises that she knows a lot more than these newcomers and turns into a little leader. She helps the little children with their shoes and their fastenings. She gets their cups or opens their lunchtime yoghurt pot for them. Instead of needing the teachers' help herself she now turn into an important ‘nursery asssistant’ and should get a happy ‘Thank you’ from her teachers and friends. That change feels good!

Will my child have enough friends the same age or older?

Well, our young lady friend may well be the most senior of the children, but she is probably closely followed by others not far behind. While it may well be the first time this happens, it certainly won't be the last. With each change of school, from early years to university, she starts again as the little fish in the big pond and ends up as the big fish in the little pond. At each stage she not only acquires skills and knowledge, but she is also learning about friendship and leadership. Soon new relationships develop and she finds her own ‘followers’ who like her, look up to her and copy her. That change gives her motivation to do a good job, because she's being watched with admiring eyes. This learning is very good for her social development. It creates the kind of friendship that we find in families, among siblings. It promotes co-operation rather than competition and it is one of the hallmarks of good Montessori practice.

Will my child be learning enough?

I should think so! Having witnessed this annual exodus and entry of children more than a dozen times over the past fifteen years I can testify to the fact that the change to 'being older' creates a new and different kind of thirst for learning. The motivation is different. Instead of looking up to her seniors and wanting to be like them, she realises that the new children look up to her as a role model. She won't want to disappoint them. She appreciates her special time with her teachers more than before and seeks out learning in a new way.

Will her progress be delayed?

No, absolutely not! Eighty percent of success in life is from getting on and working with others and only twenty percent or less is about the knowledge we hold as individuals. Learning to lead, even on a small scale, is very important and so is learning to adapt to change. It may not be examined and it may not be marked, but it sure counts in life. The confidence that comes from feeling senior is a great motivator.

Will she want to be with these younger children?

There will be times when a younger child gets in the way of her learning, but Montessori has specific ways of minimising disruption to children who are concentrating. Individual work is respected and this respect is taught from the beginning. Trained teachers know how to recognise the signs of concentration. They know it’s precious and will assist the senior child in their attempts to achieve something for themselves, most likely by distracting the younger child away from them. Most of the time, though, the older child will enjoy the friendship with younger friends. Who does not enjoy being admired and looked up to? What is a leader without followers?

Yes she will, change can be difficult to deal with, but it's natural. Missing a loved one feels sad. At the same time she is learning that it is not final. She can still see her old friends after school and at the weekends. Loving parents can support the ongoing friendships until such a time as strong new friendships have been made. Loving teachers can support her social development by talking with her and sharing her feelings of sorrow and joy.

This autumn term I've seen one girl's sadness at missing her best friend, who was just a few weeks older than her. Things have just started to change. Her parents are very sensitive and they support her with her special book, which she writes and draws in most days. She comes with us teachers to answer the door and to help children collect their things before going home. She loves to ‘read’ the children’s name cards and hand them to them as they arrive. She enjoys working with the sandpaper letters to learn to recognise the sounds and the way they are written.

She is ‘coming out’ and this is a joy for us to witness. She is finding a new dignity and a new happiness. She feels privileged to do ‘difficult’ work and we feel privileged to assist her in her learning journey.

Ten Top Tips for Taming Toddler Tantrums

Introduction

When your toddler has developed a will, but not yet the means to express their needs or wants in a way that works, you may be faced with a tantrum. Tantrums are difficult to deal with, and even more so when you are tired and if they happen in a public space with plenty of spectators.

So, what to do? My tips are in two groups, ‘Prevention’ and ‘Cure.’ The conclusion explains a bit of my experience with Montessori education, an approach to communicating with children that I love. I hope that you may find something of use to you, and that it may strengthen the bond of love between you and your precious child. 

Prevention

1.   Give choices

Who does not like choice? When your toddler realises that there are choices and that your choice for them may not be what they want, they may protest. If they feel strongly about it and they don’t know how to express their feelings they protest may develop into a tantrum. It may not be a conscious choice, but just a strong need to express their frustration.

One way to prevent this is to give your child the freedom to choose. It is an expression of love and respect because it shows your child that you trust their own ability to decide.

2. Enable action

Children love to be in action, it’s part of their nature and helps them learn about the world. Restricting them in highchairs, buggies and other devices may sometimes be helpful or necessary, but it can cause frustration and if it takes too long, may develop into a tantrum.

As a general rule, if it is safe for the child to move freely, give them their freedom. If not, explain why it is necessary and when they will be able to more around again. 

3. Communicate about Cause & Effect

Your toddler may not yet understand your explanation of why they need a coat to go outside, for instance. Opening the door to let them feel the cold may help help, or putting on your own coat, or pretending you are cold. Other examples could be negotiating going home time in the playground, or wearing an apron to do painting. In general, don’t just say ‘No!’ but explain why if possible. It does not guarantee understanding or acceptance, but it is kind and it helps your child to learn.

4. Distract

If explanation does not work, you may be able to distract your toddler. You may be able to draw attention to a passing butterfly, a big cloud (or even an aeroplane) in the sky, a few drops of rain or a Daisy. You might just be lucky. If distraction fails too, then one of the next few tips may help.

Cure

5. Ensure safety

First of all you need to make sure that your child cannot hurt themselves or others, or cause damage. If a tantrum is in full swing, negotiation is not an option. If all is safe, then you can ….   

6. L et it run

A full-blown tantrum is hard to interrupt and puts your toddler temporarily out of reach. Don’t try to restrain them or talk to them. If you can hold them without struggle, then fine. If not, just be there in the space with them and let the tantrum run its course. It takes an enormous amount of energy and at the end your child will be exhausted. If a hug is welcomed, hug them and hold them. If not, let them know that you love them by being with them. The message they need to receive is that you will not join them in their frustration but you are there for them. You know more peaceful and harmonious ways of getting what you need and you will help them learn those ways. 

7. The three C’s:  be Calm

The three C’s: Calm, Consistent and Curious, are absolutely essential.

A child throwing a tantrum is creating a mini-emergency. In an emergency we need reassurance. First aid workers are trained to calmly assess the situation, remove any dangers, then deal with any casualties. A tantrum is no different. Is your child in danger? If so, remove the danger. Is the casualty breathing? Clearly they are, so it’s not an emergency, just an over-reaction. Let it subside, then respond. Your child will learn that they can rely on you to be there for them when they need you.

8. The three C’s:  be Consistent

NEVER let the child’s tantrum change your previously agreed and explained rules. If you do, the tantrum was successful and will be used again. Your child is simply learning about the world and their place in it, all the time. If there are good reasons for doing or avoiding certain things, then talk about them to prevent tantrums, and talk about them after any tantrums. Do this when the emotions have subsided, perhaps not even directly but through a character in a book. Make it relaxing and make it fun.

9. The three C’s:  be Curious

Every tantrum is an opportunity for you to learn about your toddler. What is it that makes them feel so strongly. When does it tend to happen? Is it when they are tired? Is there a time of day when it is most likely? Do they feel strongly about certain people, or toys, or food?

Take the time to observe, and, afterwards, talk and listen. The better you get to know your child, the less likely it is that they will feel the need to resort to extreme behaviour that is very costly to them, too.  

Conclusion

10.                   The Montessori approach:
Be your child’s best friend.

The Montessori approach was developed from close observation of children’s needs and then providing for those needs and that is what I am suggesting you do.

What a child wants is not always the same as what they need, as every parent knows. A best friend has the courage to be honest and does not shirk from telling the truth. Likewise our children need us to ‘tell them the truth’ about the rules in this world, so that they have the best chance of staying healthy, growing up and making friends. Not giving in to unreasonable demands is giving up short-term popularity in the interest of long term loving respect. Which would you rather have?

Invitation

I would love for you to respond to this blog post or email me with your experiences at: thea@montessori-uk.co.uk. Please let me know if you would like to receive the full version of my Toddler-Tantrum-Taming Tips on which this blog is based so that I may send you the full PDF version. 

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