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How many lives do you live?  When do you sleep?  These are the questions I usually hear when people learn that I combine my preschool mornings with the care of the elderly in the evenings and weekends.  Luckily, I live many lives; and I sleep so soundly –because I’m exhausted- that I don’t need much.

Somehow, my seemingly opposite worlds have always made sense to me as they seamlessly flow unto each other, touching more than separating, and blending into one beautiful continuous and infinite line, a true circle of life.

I discovered Montessori as a child, at about the same time that I discovered the calm and incredibly sound minds of my grand-aunts, who lived the simplest of lives. With them, I discovered peace and order in the sorting of the beans and the cleaning of the lentils, I found logic in the endless counting of their Rosary beads, and my first arithmetic exercises were the well accounted exchange of heavenly graces for each offered prayer.  In their house, “Practical Life” was Plain Life finding the present moment with its duties and labors.  Washing dishes, sorting laundry, dusting, sweeping, cleaning bird cages, watering flowers, planting seeds, tending the orchard, natural science presenting  itself in its original scenario; earth, water, sun, moon and stars the producers and screenwriters.

My grand-aunts lived past their mid-90s, and I had the privilege of sitting with them – and my son- many afternoons to reminisce, their wisdom and memories untouched by time, preserved by their devotion to the here and now, the task at hand, the joy of each and every moment.

As the years went by, I realized that work in my Montessori classroom with my preschoolers, resembled not only the lesson but the wisdom of my elderly grand-aunts.  Finally, when I started working with the elderly, particularly those who were struggling with memory issues or dementia, I started bringing the Montessori Casa Dei Bambini to them.  They’ve helped me prepare materials for the children, we’ve played the snake game and the bank game;  we’ve written  labels and remembered words , and  we’ve stringed bead after bead, counting,  while we searched for the memory, the name, or the face that each single bead stood for.

This weekend, while browsing for a book to better serve both my children and my elder, I found the amazing work of Karen and Tom Brenner, You Say Goodbye and We Say Hello: The Montessori Method for Positive Dementia Care. The book is available through Amazon (link above) or at Barnes and Noble. Also, please check the lovely -and loving- blog The Movable Alphabet of Susan Dyer, a Montessori Theorist and former primary classroom teacher now working with the elderly.

I share this with you all now because I’ve been fortunate enough to meet, teach and care up to four generations of some families. I love my children, and their parents and grandparents.  I know that eventually, children will become parents, and in many cases, parents of their parents. In that knowledge and spirit, I’ve made a point of making my Montessori classroom and teaching more than a method to transmit information or academic and scholar knowledge. I somewhere read a quote attributed to Theodore Roosevelt  : Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you’ve got to start young.  I’ll be more than happy to help with this!

Have a wonderful here and now and keep the memories intact.  Love, V.

Indeed, Maria Montessori recognized that repetition is the basis of learning, and that it leads to attaining the perseverance that aids the evolution and establishment of a scientific mind. The quiet and peace of the Montessori classroom shelter these almost meditative activities. In our classrooms, children are allowed to repeat an activity until mastery –not boredom- renders the activity “finished”.  And yet there’s an additional, and underlying, purpose to this.

I blissfully watch the intensity with which “my children” build a tower, the authentic glee with which they make it crash down, and then, the scientific accuracy with which they erect it again. They build a city of two hundred wooden blocks for the sole pleasure of wiping it out  and rebuilding it immediately.  The sand castle that takes half a morning disappears in two seconds bare, just to be born again…

Without regret or second thoughts, the work of the children acknowledges the wisdom that we -adults- seem to forget we once had, and yearn to acquire again:  Nothing is permanent; life is a flux, a constant give and take; win and lose.

Children recognize without a problem that life is nothing else but a never ending cycle in which patience and the joy of the labor itself are the means and the goal. The peace of the work accomplished starts with the work itself.

Many years ago, while accompanying my mother in her fight with lymphoma, I had the chance to visit a Buddhist temple where I watched the painstaking labor of the monks creating a sand mandala for days, and then carefully- but in minutes- destroy it.  I was dazed with astonishment, in my mid 20s I was already old enough to lack the innate wisdom of childhood, but yet still too young to understand the profound lesson involved in the creating and destroying of the mandala. 20 years later, and after spending many hours in the company of my ever wise preschoolers, it is crystal clear why.

Knowledge, success, money, academic and professional prowess… of all the reasons why someone should be educated, one should be paramount, detachment  of the “end”, character-building through patience and tenacity, and the inalienable and self-built confidence that  yes, you can do this  -again and again- and enjoy each and every time.  If we could just live each day and work each day with this attitude…

So, if you ever need a moment to gather your thoughts, catch your breath, or sooth your soul, come build a tower with us; joy guaranteed.

Maria Montessori, the founder of the Montessori Method, first developed her educational approach after working with preschool age kids.  Over time, Montessori expanded her approach to children of all ages and includes all levels, from infant to secondary school level.

Montessori’s educational model is broken down into two basic elements:

(1) Children can engage in psychological self-construction by means of interaction.

(2) Children have an opportunity for psychological development.

These two elements are best introduced to children early on in their educational environment.  Children, especially under the age of six, can easily embrace a learning environment that intertwines the Montessori Method into their daily activities.

The teachings of Montessori, such as the emphasis of independent learning, continue to be important as children grow and develop into lifelong learners; it’s the building block upon which the child stands his tower of knowledge, or in the words of the Little Train that could, I think I can, I think I can, I know I can!

Montessori and traditional preschools both have the same goal of providing a safe learning environment for children.  The two types of preschools differ in the learning experience and the methods each use to get to achieve the same goal.

Teachers of the Montessori style embraces these differences because they understand how important these differences are in shaping a child’s learning, work habits and future attitude about themselves and the world they live in.

At Apex Peak Preschool we believe that every child can benefit from the Montessori teaching methods at an early age, which is what “Casa dei Bambini” was developed for.  At our school we strive to empower children to be thoughtful, empathic and socially.

It’s inevitable that every child reaches for his or her parents’ smart phone.  Playing on your smart phone doesn’t have to mean it can’t be educational.  There are plenty of apps that continue the Montessori learning.  Here are 5 must have apps to keep your toddler busy and learning.

• Montessori Counting Board (Ages: Infant – 6, Cost: $0.99) – This app gets kids to learn to count ascending & descending order in a variety of formats and counting options.
• Montessori Matching Board (Ages: Infant – young preschool age, Cost: $0.99) – This app helps kids to recognize shapes,  letters and numbers through a small-scale matching game.
• Montessori Alphabet Maze Free (Ages: Infant – young preschool age, Cost: FREE)  –  This app helps kids work on their fine motor skills, learn visual tracking, and expand a child’s attention span through alphabet exposure and repetition.
• Montessori Alpha Writer (Ages: Infant – young preschool age, Cost: $2.99)– This app helps kids learn to identify consonants and vowels, create and spell their own words, and focus on early reading skills.
• Intro to Math (Ages: : Infant – young preschool age, Cost: $4.99) – This app helps kids learn and recognize numbers between 0 and 9, symbols and units, sequence, spatial relationships and problem solving skills.

We at Apex Peak Preschool believe that technology is the language of the new millennium and that children have an intuitive ability to learn it -just like any other language- so we strive to provide them with every possible opportunity to learn through, and with it.

* In no way does the Apex Peak Preschool endorse or paid to endorse any of the above products.  It is simply our recommendation and we do not accept responsibility for the product itself.

I’ve always found a hidden poetry within the term “Practical Life”.  Known to be a primordial component of the Montessori education, Practical Life involves the little tasks that will aid and support the development of stereognostic intelligence.

The tiny fingers find the millimetrical neuronal assessment of their movement, the eyes find the evasive spot yet to be scrubbed, the ear learns the tones of the water as it fills a vessel… The child itself turns into an overflowing vessel of independence, a walking verse of pride and joy: “I can do it all by myself!” 

And yet, dormant, like the flower in the seed, is the subtle wisdom of just the words Practical Life.  To everything there’s a beginning and an end. To all a process in order and sequence under the unemotional hierarchy of physics. To all an inevitable trial and error until we succeed. And yet, life has to be kept practical, one turn after the other, right, left, up, down, open, close, ying, yang, yes, no.

God within our daily motions. If in anything we’re made to our Creator’s image and likeness is in our ability to be the gods of Baruch Spinoza’s profound philosophy: the creators of order, harmony, beauty, simplicity, and elegance. And to illustrate my point I’d love to share with you one of my favorite pearls of wisdom, from Terry Moore of the Radius Foundation.  So tie your shoes people, live long and prosper!!

In an interview with Barbara Walters on ABC’s “The 10 Most Fascinating People of 2004,” the Google.com founders – Larry Page and Sergey Brin – both credited their years as Montessori students as a major factor behind their successful business.  Despite the fact that both Page and Brin’s parents were college professors, the moguls said their learning at a Montessori school taught them to learn to self-educate and provided them with the freedom to pursue their own interests.

Other famous people educated in Montessori schools:
·        Larry Page & Sergey Brin, Founders of Google.com
·        Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon.com
·        Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Former First Lady of the United States of America
·        Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, Singer & Music Mogul
·        Julia Child, Chef, Author and TV cooking host
·        Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nobel Prize Winner for Literature (and my personal favorite!)
·        Katherine Graham, Ex-owner of the Washington Post
·        Anne Frank, Author