What a Wooden Table Brings to the Table: The Benefits of Natural Materials in the Classroom

“The senses, being explorers of the world, open the way to knowledge.” -Dr. Maria Montessori

Upon entering an authentic Montessori environment, one of the first things you will notice is the materials. It is unlikely that you will encounter any cartoonish alphabet posters, any star charts, any brightly colored plastic cubbies or any plastic tables. What you will find is a variety of wooden, glass, and metal materials, sturdy child-sized furniture, house plants, and walls decorated with prints of classical artwork from cultures around the world. Maria Montessori insisted that an environment as closely rooted in nature and reality as possible was the most beneficial to the individual child. Here are some of the reasons why!

1. Naturally Sourced Materials Promote Sensorial Exploration

Dr. Montessori emphasized the use of real materials in the classroom. Materials such as brass, wood, wicker, cotton, metal, and glass provide important information to the child. Some warm to the touch and cool with the air. Others are rough and dense. Some are heavy and some are light. Some are durable and some are fragile. These provide a multi-sensorial experience for the child.

2. The Natural World Is Important for Development

By utilizing materials that come from nature in your child’s belongings, it puts them closer in touch to the real world around them. By doing this, you are encouraging a connection to the earth and the environment. 

3. Natural Materials Last

Plastics fade in color, and their quality is not normally the best. Natural toys made from wood or metal pass the test of time. They are durable, classic, and enduring. Many materials go years in the classroom before needing to be replaced. The child can work with the material with no fear of damage. 

4. Natural is Better for the Environment

Taking care of the environment is at the core of Montessori philosophy. It’s a positive that our materials don’t sit in landfills for years on end. Instead they can be recycled, re-purposed, or they will biodegrade. 

5. Natural Materials Are Beautiful

The prepared environment is an important concept of Montessori learning. Natural materials are beautiful and real, thus making them more attractive and appealing to the child. 

6. They Inspire

Simple and natural materials create opportunities for open-ended work. This allows children to make their own discoveries, test hypotheses, and develop new skills, particularly when the child plays independently.

Overall, what parents want for their children is for them to feel comfortable, safe and happy, whether they are at home or at school. A Montessori environment is meant to mimic and be an extension of the home. Every detail is designed to ensure that it is a place where the child can feel truly at home and at ease. Our children deserve the best that we can give them, and the best that we can give them is reality and beauty.

Math and the Toddler Child

By Claire Nguyen, Toddler Directress

Some parents might be wondering, “what does Math look like in a Montessori Infant-Toddler community?” Like other concepts, it is presented in developmentally appropriate ways, although they may not always look "math-y." For example, we know that young children learn through movement and exploration in these communities. It's critical, then, that the physical environment provide realistic, predictable feedback as young children move through it, reinforcing their spatial awareness. Objects with which the children interact need to respond the same way to each interaction, reinforcing the lessons that children learn as they explore. If you notice, Montessori Infant-Toddler classrooms do not have (or rarely have) battery-driven toys available. Because we want children to build their capacity for prediction and their ability to sort and classify real information. There aren't responses (like noises or movements) that aren't driven by the child's own actions. By interacting in a predictable environment and building their understanding of cause and effect, children's mathematical minds develop. You won't see bouncy chairs with internal motors or flashing lights on battery-powered buttons. Instead, you'll see children exploring how different shapes and objects fit together, how they roll or land or weigh, how materials fill space, how liquids fill differently than solids, and the like.

The language rich nature of the classrooms also supports children's developing mathematical ability, as the prepared adult uses accurate vocabulary to narrate children's experiences. You may hear, “you have a smaller cylinder and a larger cylinder" or "let's collect the cubes together." Children build the vocabulary to describe dimension, for comparison and for the basis of geometric shapes. You'll hear comparative language like, "more," "less," "bigger," "smaller," "heavier," "lighter," etc. as children move through their spaces and engage in language-based games with the directress. Finally, you'll notice children beginning to understand sequences, including the signals for those sequences, like how an adult setting a placemat on the table suggests that it's time to make one's way to a chair for a snack, or how to dispose of their crumbs/uneaten food in the trash before placing their place settings in the dishwashing racks/bins.

These may seem like small successes, but for the growing mind, they are foundational to later development. There are endless mathematically informed qualities you have already adopted but probably think about rarely, like for example, how much weight to place on a step as you're walking up and down a staircase. But just like you know how it feels to step up on a stair that's not there, or to expect one more step down when you slam your foot into the landing, understanding them helps you to navigate through your environment with ease. It's in these infant and toddler experiences that those core understandings are constructed, in preparation for the application in traditional mathematics activities children will master in later years.

The Prepared Adult and Enabling Healthy Eating Habits

By Claire Nguyen, Toddler Directress

Over the past couple of months, on-the-go eating has been replaced with exclusively at-home meals. For many families, being home together all day may feel like navigating uncharted waters. The three daily meals and snacks in between have become the markers that break up ours and our children’s days in a new way. While this time obviously comes with a laundry list of new challenges, it also presents the opportunity to enable a healthy relationship with food, especially for our most impressionable toddlers.

The adults are laying the foundations for the child's relationship with food and for good eating habits. The adult decides where, when, and what the child will eat. It would be ideal to set up the kitchen so the child can be independent, as well as involved in the meal preparation. Children have more interest in food when they are part of the preparation of the meal, and they can learn to get a drink when needed if they can reach a water source by themselves.

WHERE TO EAT:
Establishing a place to eat is important for the young child. It is also important to set a rule that food and beverages stay at the table and we eat at the table, not play. It is ideal to eat meals together as a family but to not expect the young child to sit at the table until everyone is finished. If the toddler is finished, you can say "I see you are finished, you may be excused" or you could offer the words for them to ask "May I please be excused?" The adult may assist him/her to clean up their spot and take their plate to the kitchen/sink area.

Sometimes, the young child will walk away from the table with food or utensil in their hand. When that occurs, the adult can say, "I'll keep the food/utensil at the table. It's okay for you to go." If they would like to keep eating, they need to sit back down at the table with the food/utensil. If not, model clearing things away to show that by leaving, they are choosing to be finished.

WHEN TO EAT:
It's best to keep with the daily rhythm/routine and offer meals at regular times during the day, rather than having the kitchen open at all hours. Providing three meals a day (breakfast, lunch, dinner) and perhaps a small snack in the morning and/or the afternoon.

WHAT TO EAT:
As the adult, you can decide what food you'd like your family to eat. For some families, only one option is offered but for others, two options are offered to the child that they find acceptable. Toddlers are not yet capable of making good food choices completely by themselves but will learn based on what's modeled and offered to them.

When it comes down to it, this surplus of meals together with our children is also a surplus in opportunities to teach our children, to grow healthy with our children, but most importantly to love our children. Savor the conversations and the bonding that these meals can present!