We are in the middle of the fall parent conference season. We put lots of effort into conferences because these are such an important time for sharing information about the children in our care.

I have heard of schools where a day is set aside for conferences and parents come through every 30 minutes. By the end of the day the teachers have no idea who they are talking about or what they are saying because they are just exhausted.

We schedule conferences over the course of several weeks to give every family the chance to come when it is most convenient for them. We will even come back in the evening, if necessary.

We also like to give parents the information that we will be covering the day before the conference so we can answer any important questions during that important meeting. It is unfortunate that our culture has set up the stereotype of the teachers and parents being at odds with each other.

It really came home to me today when a parent thanked us for taking the time to talk with them when we must be tired from teaching all week. Sure, it is tiring to teach all day and then do conferences after a full day or even week of teaching. But the benefits far, far outweigh the effort of taking that extra hour to confer.

We should all be looking for ways to help “our” children flourish and reach their human potential. Together we can accomplish so much. I appreciate each and every parent who takes the time to share with us information about their children. It helps us see the children as more complete individuals. And that means we can be better teachers.

Parent conferences. Parent partnerships.

I talked about this last week at the parent meeting, but it is one of those questions that we hear over and over. Parents are amazed at what they see their children doing at school, or they think we are talking about the wrong child at conferences!

So, is there a secret formula that we use to get the kind of behavior we see at school? Not really, but it does take commitment and follow through.

Parents can get the same results at home if they are willing to make the commitment and put forth the effort to make it happen. It isn’t easy and there is no over-night magical change. But it IS worth the effort.

The first step in the process to be clear as adults what we want to see as appropriate behavior in children. I can’t stress this part of the equation enough. We Montessori teachers have honed that image to a crystal clear picture. We want children to be respectful: of themselves, of others and of the environment. We want them to be responsible. We want them to grow into the kind of adults we would choose as friends. We keep that image clearly in place.

The next step is to identify the behaviors in children that are consistent and inconsistent with this image. We want to encourage those that are consistent and discourage those that are not going to lead to the kind of individual that we envision. This may sound easy, and in some ways it is, but the follow-through is hard, hard work.

I’ll share more of that later….

This has been an exciting week for sensorial lessons. Two new ones that were introduced to the classroom were the odor bottles and the tasting jars. Before I could put them in the classroom we had to get to the point where the students were able to handle jar lids and use a medicine dropper.

These lessons zero in on two senses that are harder to help children develop. We want to refine their discrimination in all sensorial areas, so these are especially important to include in the classroom.

Working individually with the students it takes time to introduce new materials to all who are ready. But it is definitely worth the effort. How excited the children were to smell those odors! And they were so careful with all the steps. The odor bottles are particularly laden with many steps. It is important to keep the odors free from cross-contamination, so the right lids must go back onto the right bottles at the end of the lesson. Wow!

I was delighted to observe the care children were exhibiting when replacing the lids. I know they paid attention to the presentation when I see them look into the inside of each lid and match the colored dot found there with the one on the bottom of each bottle.

For the tasting jars, they must dispense two drops of the flavor solution onto their tasting cup (a petit four cup). There are four basic tastes that they learn to recognize: sweet, sour, salty and bitter. Just imagine! Everything we eat is a combination of these four tastes! Before this lesson goes into the classroom the teacher must also prepare the solutions. Sweet is simply sugar water, and salty is salt water. For sour some diluted vinegar is used. A solution of alum powder and water provides the bitter flavor (and it is definitely bitter!)

I love to watch children taste these flavors. One would think that they would choose not to do this lesson because they cannot tell from the unmarked containers which one is the bitter. But they do this over and over just because they are determined to learn about tastes.

So there we have a taste of Montessori!

We were fortunate to have a long weekend last week due to Labor Day. I was scheduled to attend an all-day in-service on Saturday, but when I arrived at the location, the in-service had been cancelled. That left the whole day free!

So, I went to school and worked on the classroom instead. For children in the early childhood classroom, it is of the utmost importance that they develop concentration in order to benefit from the materials. There are so many little things that can be done to encourage concentration. I spent several hours on Saturday preparing some of them.

I changed the glass marbles in a small scooping lesson so the new color would call to children to keep practicing. I took out the screwdriver, which had gotten damaged and replaced it with a very small nut and bolt lesson. This lesson will not only help with concentration, but it will improve the fine motor control of children who use it. I changed the tong transfer lesson to one that will be a little more challenging.

In art I added a new lesson with paint and the rubber band lesson with two loops. Not only do children need to develop concentration, but they need to become more independent. We adults take using rubber bands for granted. Young children get easily frustrated by the looping action, but there are many lessons that are bundled with rubber bands. All the children want to be able to do that for themselves. They have mastered the one-loop rubber banding. Now on to the harder step.

All these little details make such a difference.