"The new woman, like the butterfly come forth from the chrysalis, shall be liberated from all those attributes which once made her desirable to man only as the source of material blessings of existence. She shall be, like man, an individual, a free human being, a social worker...She shall wish to be loved for herself and not as a giver of comfort and repose. She shall wish a love free from every form of servile labor. The goal of human love is not the egotistical end of ensuring its own satisfaction- it is the sublime goal of multiplying the forces of the free spirit, making it almost Divine, and, within such beauty and light, perpetuating the species."
This afternoon, the children convened in the yard to release the Painted Lady Butterflies they reared from microscopic butterfly eggs into beautiful adults. Although they were visibly stirred by the sunlight and fresh air, the butterflies choose to cooperate with our plan of allowing each child to carefully remove one from the cage and hold it on their palm for a few seconds before watching it flutter away into the warm spring breeze.
"No man learns self-discipline through hearing another man speak. The phenomenon of discipline needs as a preparation a series of complete actions, such as are presupposed in the genuine application of a really educative method. Discipline is reached always by indirect means. The end is obtained, not by attacking the mistake and fighting it, but by developing activity in spontaneous work...This work cannot be arbitrarily offered, and it is precisely here that our method enters; it must be work which the human being instinctively desires to do, work towards which the latent tendencies of life naturally turn, or towards which the individual step by step ascends...The child disciplined in this way, is no longer the child he was at first, who knows how to be good passively; but he is an individual who has made himself better, who has overcome the usual limits of his age, who has made a great step forward, who has conquered his future in his present."In the Montessori environment, the primary purpose of all Practical Life activities is to assist the child in acquiring self-discipline (order, concentration, coordination, and independence). For Montessori, discipline is not to be confused with passive immobility ("Be quiet!" "Be still!"), but refers to purposeful work. By directing the child's actions to a purposeful end, their behavior no longer has the appearance of disorder, but of meaningful work. Although there are innumerable examples of Practical Life activities (limited only by the imagination of the child's guide) with differing aims, my belief is that the most effective ones for helping children acquire self-discipline are those that permit them to imitate adult activity in a purposeful way, to care for themselves (and be more independent), or to contribute positively to their community by caring for the classroom environment.
Like all Montessori guides, I am always on the lookout for new Practical Life activities, but I try to be really discriminating- personally, I have a definite aversion to plastic materials and I definitely prefer "classic" Care of the Self or Care of the Environment activities to endless variations of hand transfers. So, you can imagine my excitement when the newest Montessori Services catalogue arrived with this on the cover:
I love woodworking (my first birthday present from my husband was a drill!) and I have long suspected that children would too! Unfortunately, I have never been in a classroom that was equipped with a woodworking bench (hint, Josh!). I have seen lots of guides try to do hammering activities in their classrooms without a bench and a vise, but to be honest, I was never particularly pleased with the way the activity turned out. For most young children, holding the nail and hammering without hitting their finger is quite a challenge, and expecting them to coordinate this with holding/bracing the board at the same time just seemed like too much to me (I don't think it isolates the difficulty enough to set them up to be successful). As a result, up to now, my biggest foray into hammering was allowing the children to hammer golf tees into clay.
"Now let us imagine a man appointed to a chair of science in some university, with the task before him of doing further original work with the hymenoptera. Let us suppose that, arrived at his post, he is shown a glass covered case containing a number of beautiful butterflies, mounted by means of pins, their outspread wings motionless. The student will say that this is some child's play, not material for scientific study, that these specimens in the box are more fitly a part of the game which the little boys play, chasing butterflies and catching them in a net. With such material as this the experimental scientist can do nothing. 
Over the weekend, the first of the Painted Lady Butterflies that the class raised from butterfly eggs emerged from its chrysalis. The children stood spellbound over the course of the day as the remaining five climbed out of their papery cases, their wrinkled wings still damp with meconium, unfurled their proboscis, and sat silently in the sunlight.
"The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful."
and one of my favorite language lessons: writing the garden. In Montessori classrooms, children repeatedly trace sandpaper letters to learn the correct formation of letters. As a result, once they acquire the finger strength and fine motor coordination necessary for handwriting, they usually explode into the "spontaneous" ability to write letters, numbers, and words. This is very exciting for the child! Upon discovering that they can write, most children desperately want to write everything (names of their friends, the menu from lunch, letters to their parents, etc). This morning, one boy appointed himself the task of making his own signs for the garden and walking outside to stake them in their correct spots in the raised beds. I must say, they turned out quite nicely.
Later, we went out as a group and planted four kinds of heirloom beans- some pretty stringless ones in assorted colors for eating (Red Swan, Climbing French, and Golden Crescent) and some for shelling (Slow Foods Arc of Taste Hidasta)- some peas (Dwarf Gray Sugar and Green Arrow for shelling), and some broccoli raab/rapini (pungent, Italian "broccoli"- actually a relative of the turnip).
We concluded our planting with a little tasting of some broccoli, sugar snap peas, and haricot vert that was very well received.
"The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent, not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious. The beet is a melancholy vegetable, the one most willing to suffer. You can't squeeze blood out of a turnip! The beet is the murderer returned to the scene of the crime. The beet is the ancient ancestor of the Autumn moon, bearded, buried, all but fossilized. The beet was Rasputin's favorite vegetable. You could see it in his eyes."
-Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume
Nevertheless, we went out to the garden and sowed several rows of seeds,
returned to the classroom to finish our preparations by carefully slicing some freshly roasted beets, and went to enjoy our snack on the patio picnic table.
The verdict: well, I will allow the clean plates and crimson lips to speak for themselves!
smoothed it out with the rakes,
meticulously sowed rows of carrots and radishes,
and exuberantly watered the garden beds.
In order to achieve a better understanding of what they were planting, the children also conducted a radish tasting and a carrot tasting, in which they were given vegetables in their "raw" state (with stems and leaves attached). In the classroom, the children have been learning about the functions and names of different parts of plants; as a result, they were particularly excited to learn that when they eat carrots and radishes, they are eating the roots of the plants.
During the tastings, the children were encouraged to make judgments about the foods they were tasting and use descriptive language to communicate their thoughts, helping them to develop a more sophisticated palate and a rich vocabulary. 
Radishes and carrots are a wonderful choice for a children's garden because of their relatively quick germinating time. With a little luck they can be plucked from their beds and land on our table in no time!
Bon Appetit!.jpg)
2009-2010 School Photos are Available for Purchase!
As part of our membership in Slow Foods USA Farm to School Program, we partner with The Family Table Farm, a local farm owned by Mike and Lisel Record, to purchase naturally grown (without the use of pesticides), local produce. When the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) shares are delivered to the school, the children cook with the freshly harvested produce and eat their freshly prepared dish, sharing the fruits of their labor around a communal table. As the children cook and eat their way through the year, their understanding of local and seasonal produce grows. 
The children enjoyed their fragrant dish as part of a Spring harvest lunch picnic in the company of their friends. Turns out, there were more than a few fans of the delicate lemon garlic flavor of the pesto. Several of the children happily helped themselves to seconds! Hopefully, it is the first of many great meals to come!
