I try to get into the early childhood class as often as possible and today was the perfect day for that. The older children were busy with other pursuits and both Britton and Rebecca were here to handle that class, so I slipped into the EC for an observation.

It was wonderful to see the many lessons being chosen! Even better, I was able to observe our newest student doing independent work (three different lessons in 45 minutes!).

That 45 minutes was jammed packed with activity. Here are some of the many lessons I saw. In geography there were three different activities with the puzzle maps. Child was tracing a map onto construction paper to create a person map. There was also building puzzle maps onto their control maps and fetching pieces. A couple of children brought some biome materials in from the elementary to use. Finally the continent map was compared to a globe that had been divided into the two hemispheres.

Lots of practical life and sensorial work was evident, as well. Several children chose the drawers of the geometric cabinet and from younger to older children used the cylinder blocks at levels appropriate for their development. A child did the pressure cylinders and the color tablets. Another did stereognostic sorting and one worked on parts of the bells. I watched one child in deep concentration with another sorting lesson, too. Several children worked on dressing frames (one kept at the first tying frame until completely successful). A very young child chose the locks and keys after a presentation with the lesson. Then there were many transfer lessons from the practical life area, too. One student spent thirty minutes of my time in the class scrubbing the art boards. Such vigorous scrubbing!

The early morning is not usually the time that children choose from math and language, but even so, I witnessed two different fraction lessons, a numeration lesson with double digit numbers, reading words lists and booklets and some sandpaper letter work. Another child was matching beginning sounds to objects.

The science area was under heavy attack. One child spent most of the time of my observation working on learning the parts of the tree followed by making a booklet of those parts. Several were learning parts of animals. Another chose the life cycle of the butterfly.

There were various art lessons from tearing and cutting paper to stitching, drawing and collage being done, too. In fact, the classroom was buzzing with activity for the entire time I was there. It was such a wonderful way to start the morning!

It is a new year and it makes sense at this time to reflect on things that have happened in the past. We usually reflect on the year that has just come to a close, but things have taken me further back.

In my last electronic newsletter I wrote about concentration as a goal for the children in our classes. This was to help prepare family members coming to the holiday open house to respect the chosen work of the children and allow them to concentrate.

A former student read that post and responded about how she embraced the ability to concentrate during her time at New Horizon. She wrote:

“I remember, and appreciate, the way your teachers never took anything out of my hands. It must take me a long time to examine something new, because so many people are grabby. And they try to explain how to use something while you are still examining what it is shaped like. I think the teachers would see me using a lesson wrong, and then say something like ‘When you're finished, I want to show you something.’ And they would walk away, and let me finish looking things over and trying to fit them together. When I was ready, I could find them, and they could show me how things were really supposed to work. It was polite.”

Polite. Respectful. Child oriented.

I heard from another former student over the holidays. He shared that I had affected his life profoundly and that he thinks about his time at New Horizon frequently. He credits his success in the movie industry to his Montessori background.

As reassuring it is to hear these testimonials, the real success comes from allowing the innate potential of the individuals to flourish. It isn’t so much what we did, but what we allowed them to do for themselves.

The most compelling voice from the past has been my own, though. Over the break we visited with our daughter and her family in Massachusetts. My granddaughter asked me over and over again to share stories from when I was a little girl. I told her over 100 of them. I realized that the children at school love to hear these stories, too.

So, I am taking the time to write them in order to preserve them for all the children in my life.

Happy New Year.