What the Evidence Says About Montessori Education

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It’s been more than 100 years since Dr. Maria Montessori first developed the Montessori method of education, which focuses on building children’s resourcefulness and natural abilities through practical play.

Today, Montessori is the most widespread alternative to traditional education. There are thousands of Montessori schools across the globe where students practice daily life skills, learn through hands-on activities, and explore the interdisciplinary nature of science and social studies.

Two main tenets of a Montessori education are mixed-age classrooms and no grades or homework. At Montessori schools, younger children have long blocks of time—up to three hours at once—to freely interact with specially developed learning materials. As children get older, they participate in extensive research projects, which they present to their class. At all ages, you won’t see rows of desks or assigned seats; students are welcome to move about classrooms freely and make choices about what to work on.

Clearly, Montessori takes a different approach compared to traditional education. But is it better for kids?

Read more on Psychology Today

Defuse Angry ADHD Behavior in Your Child: Reflective Listening

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“You just don’t understand!” Sound familiar? If so, then your child’s meltdowns might stem from his inability to properly express his feelings. Learn how reflective listening and staying calm can help defuse anger.

When our children feel bad, they behave badly.

It helps to remember that a lot of bad ADHD behavior stems from a strong emotion the child is feeling. Kids often can’t articulate their feelings, so they come out in tantrums or defiance. They don’t know any other way to communicate how angry or disappointed they are.

Parents usually react to a child’s misbehavior, instead of realizing that we need to address the feeling that is fueling the ADHD behavior.

Read more on ADDitude Mag

Explanation Effect: Why You Should Always Teach What You Learn

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“I don’t know what I think until I write it down.” ― Joan Didion

It is peculiar irony in life that the fastest and best way to learn something is to give it to others as soon as you learn it — not to hog it yourself. Knowledge wants to be free. To rest in other people’s minds. To connect to other knowledge. It’s an innately social organism. Therefore, teaching is knowledge’s oxygen.

Read more on Accelerated Intelligence

New Study: The More you Hug your Kids, the More Their Brains Develop

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To borrow a phrase: love works in mysterious ways. We are born to love and, as it turns out, love and affection are necessary for both optimal positive emotional and physical development. And to be honest, nothing feels better than giving your loved one a warm embrace –or being on the receiving end.

Read more at Daily Health Post

Montessori Had It Right: We Learn By Doing

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Most four- and five-year-olds can sing the alphabet song and print their names, but few can actually read. So, what does it take to push these kids to accomplish this cognitive milestone? A majority of parents and teachers alike think the answer to this question is lots of practice naming letters and sounds out loud. But, reading practice isn’t the whole story or perhaps even the most important part. Practice printing letters turns out to be imperative to reading success. When the body figures out how to write letters, the mind follows suit in terms of being able to recognize them.

Case in point, a few years ago, neuroscientist Karen James found that preschool children who took part in a one-month long reading program where they practiced printing words improved more in their letter recognition than kids who did the same reading program but practiced naming (rather than writing) the words instead. Letter recognition isn’t enhanced as much by reading letters as it is by printing them.

Learn more about James’s research at Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/choke/201304/montessori-had-it-right-we-learn-doing

Our Kids are Deprived of This Essential Ingredient for Happiness — Victoria Prooday

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Montessori explained both the importance of the connection between the hand and the developing young brain and the link between purposeful work and healthy feelings of self esteem and self worth. The following article shows how modern life is impeding both developmental processes.

https://yourot.com/parenting-club/busy-hands

“Virtual Autism” May Explain Explosive Rise in ASD Diagnoses

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Some children who have been diagnosed with autism or autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) could dramatically benefit from not being exposed to electronic screens.

New clinical case studies have found that many young children who spend too much screen time—on TV’s, video games, tablets and computers—have symptoms labeled as “autism.”1 When parents take away the screens for a few months the child’s symptoms disappear. The term for this phenomenon is “Virtual Autism” or autism induced by electronic screens. The term “Virtual Autism” was coined by Romanian clinical psychologist Dr Marius Zamfir.

Romania witnessed an astonishing rise in autism among youngsters in a children’s hospital. The cause was unknown, so one psychiatrist dug into the activity logs the hospital collected on all admitted patients. In those records he found a strong trend: children presenting with autism were spending four or more hours a day watching some kind of screen: television, computer, tablet, or phone. Today in Romania, treatment of autism by screen withdrawal is considered routine and has public support.

Read full article

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Want to be a great parent? Let your children be bored

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From books, arts and sports classes to iPads and television, many parents do everything in their power to entertain and educate their children. But what would happen if children were just left to be bored from time to time? How would it affect their development?

I began to think about boredom and children when I was researching the influence of television on children’s storytelling in the 1990s. Surprised at the lack of imagination in many of the hundreds of stories I read by ten to 12 year-old children in five different Norfolk schools, I wondered if this might partly be an effect of TV viewing. Findings of earlier research had revealed that television does indeed reduce children’s imaginative capacities.

For instance, a large scale study carried out in Canada in the 1980s as television was gradually being extended across the country, compared children in three communities – one which had four TV channels, one with one channel and one with none. The researchers studied these communities on two occasions, just before one of the towns obtained television for the first time, and again two years later. The children in the no-TV town scored significantly higher than the others on divergent thinking skills, a measure of imaginativeness. This was until they, too, got TV – when their skills dropped to the same level as that of the other children.

Read full article

Photo by Joel Overbeck on Unsplash

Nutritional Coach for Foxworthy Primary

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We recently partnered with nutritional coach Dana Yeats, who will be consulting with our Foxworthy Primary staff about our snack program.  Dana will be providing the school with recipes for whole food snacks that not only satisfy but promote and provide balanced blood sugar throughout the day. When children are nutritionally balanced, they are calmer, more aware and centered and they will be at their optimum levels for learning and playing. If we can create an environment where our children form a healthy, satisfying relationship to food, they will know and understand what their body needs and how to fuel it down the road.  Every snack will be balanced between lean protein, healthy fats and whole food carbohydrates, plus we will also read an overview of Vision 20 to get the best tips on improving their eyesight since young ages. We want to encourage children to try new foods and to eat a variety of fresh seasonal foods. When we do that, we provide their bodies with the essential vitamins and minerals that they need to thrive and grow.

Part of the partnership includes a complimentary 30 minute Family Nutritional Analysis with Dana for every family. Schedule your time with her or learn more at:

http://4pillarscoaching.com/services/

Recommended Blog: Name Calling, Insults, and Teasing

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Name Calling, Insults, and Teasing: A Guide to Anger, Conflict, and Respect, is a blog published by Dr. Jeff Rubin. Dr. Rubin has taught conflict resolution at his alma mater, the University of Minnesota, as well as at other institutions including clinics, correctional facilities, and public schools.

His blog features suggestions for working through conflict and supporting respectful relationships, often using examples from literature, history, and comics to help illustrate his ideas. The Primary faculty hope that you will find some of the ideas presented in this blog helpful.