Guide Children to Learn with Respect, Kindness

Children love to learn and they learn best by doing, participating and being actively involved. Tasks around the house can offer many learning experiences. Children love working with their parents when work is accepted at their ability level. Real experiences are what Montessori children love. 

The Montessori classroom offers hundreds of learning activities that are geared to your child's individual needs. Some of these activities really can’t be replicated in a home environment entirely, especially when it comes to socialization and learning from others. Classroom experiences play an important part in how the child approaches a new task. Seeing it done first through a lesson or by watching other children helps the child have confidence in their own abilities. 

Children need some social contact in order to become well-rounded human beings. They are developing who they are; who they will become, and strategies for coping with whatever life gives them. A small community school may be a great option, especially if both parents have to work. A small community school that offers a rich cultural environment and inspiration to seek out and discover new things would be optimal. 

Suntree Montessori, established in 1990, is a one-room classroom, with certified Montessori teachers, and a very small number of children. We can boast that our Montessori teacher has been offering just such an enriched environment as lead teacher for 19 years. 

If you choose to keep your child (or children) home, the success of your efforts to guide your child from home will be the result of the delicate balance between the one who guides the child without letting the child feel your presence too much, but always ready to give any desired help or to redirect only when necessary.

Don’t be overly concerned about mistakes. We often tell the children about Thomas Edison, “Results! Why man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won’t work.”

Let us treat our children with all the respect and kindness we expect to see in them. When we try to force them to do things our way, when we are overbearing and demand submission, no wonder they will become more headstrong and rebellious.

Kindness is consistently interpreting the wishes of others, in conforming one’s self to another, and then sacrificing our will to theirs by choice, as if as a gift. We are here to offer to this young child’s life the means for its development, and then we must step back and watch with awe and respect, that development happen before our humble and protective guiding eyes.

Cynthia Thomas founded her first Montessori school in Brevard County in 1983. She now operates five schools throughout Florida. She discovered Montessori’s unique approach when her children attended a school in Hawaii. She received her masters in education specializing in Montessori from Charminade University in Hawaii.

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