Apple Pie!

"The greatest sign of success for a teacher is to be able to say, "The children are now working as if I did not exist."

-Dr. Maria Montessori

It's officially apple harvesting time! For weeks, the children have been munching on the crunchy bounty growing on the apple tree in the yard, begging their parents at the end of the day to let them pick more apples to take home with them, and toting around little buckets of fallen apples during play time.

Today, we decided that the apples were ripe enough to celebrate the first week of fall with one of our most popular baking projects-homemade apple pie. To prepare, the children took turns carefully scaling a small ladder and picking apples from the tree (there was a never-ending line of enthusiastic children for nearly forty minutes- no sooner would they climb the ladder and pluck their selection, than they would race back to the end of the line to anxiously await another turn).

Once our basket was brimming with crimson specimens, the children carried it into the kitchen to begin their preparations.


The apples were peeled, cored, and spiral sliced using an old-fashioned, hand cranked, apple peeler and corer. The children thought this was lots of fun!

They particularly liked the spiral slices of apple that it produced!

The children made quick work of the mise en place for the pie. It was time to begin baking! The children mixed together the fragrant ingredients,

rolled out the pie crust into 1/8" thick sheets, cut it into rounds, pressed it into individual pie tins,

and ladled them full of the apple filling.

Perhaps most exciting, was the leadership exhibited by the eldest students in the classroom. One of the greatest benefits of the Montessori environment is the mixed age group; this permits the oldest children to assume additional responsibilities and serving as role models to the younger student. This allows older students to review concepts, consolidate their own knowledge, gain confidence and leadership experience. Additionally, it fosters an authentic sense self-esteem by permitting them to make a meaningful contribution to the classroom community. Simultaneously, it provides younger children with good role models and exposure to more sophisticated uses of language, social interactions, ways of thinking, and advanced lessons.

It would be hard for me to imagine behavior more worthy of imitation than that of the oldest children in the classroom today. The eldest children led the younger children through the baking activity- tying their little aprons around their waists, explaining the ingredients, helping them roll out their dough, and gently assisting them in preparing their little pies. They were helpful, patient, and kind. Sometimes, all the teacher needs to do is sit back and observe (and, perhaps, beam with pride).

All that was left for me to do was place the little pies in the oven! Within minutes the entire school was redolent with the intoxicating fragrance of cinnamon and apples.

Fittingly, the children concluded the day by enjoying their Autumn refreshment on the patio next to the apple tree and a lawn covered with the first sprinkling of crunchy, fallen leaves. Honestly, what could be better than warm apple pie in the company of friends?

Inspired Materials: Sunflower Seed Saving

Here is one of my favorite Autumn Practical Life Lessons- Sunflower Seed Saving. Like many practical life lessons, removing seeds from a sunflower with tweezers helps young children to coordinate the fine motor movements of their hand, develops finger strength and concentration, and indirectly prepares the child for handwriting by developing their pincer grip. Additionally, it ties in nicely with units about the seasons, botany (parts of a plant/parts of a flower), and gardening.

It takes a surprising amount of finger strength and precision to remove the seeds, and I imagine that most people would be truly amazed by how interesting children find this activity and how long children will persist at the activity.

After all of the seeds are removed, children can roast the sunflower seeds, plant them, or use them to make pinecone bird feeders!

Thanks to Terri Todd, of Mapleton Montessori (Boulder, CO), for introducing me to this work (merely one of many debts of gratitude I owe her).

Inspired Practical Life Materials: Hammering Nails into a Tree Stump

"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."

-Maria Montessori, The Montessori Method

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.



But, hammering nails into a tree stump... that is truly inspired! The stump is beautiful, pleasant smelling, makes a nice sound when struck, and very stable- allowing the child to concentrate all of their efforts on hitting the nail. In short, it is the perfect first hammering activity! Pounding nails is a very pleasant, centering, soothing past time, and sure enough, children seem to adore it!




The lovely oak stump that the children are using was donated by Fred Bustamante Wood Products. When we offered to pay, he gave us a kind, unassuming shrug and said "It's for the kids." Indeed! Thank you for your kindness!

Our First Farm to School Meal: Roasted Lemon and Garlic Scallion Herbed Pesto

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.

Today marked our first CSA meal. It was particularly exciting to begin our program with garlic scallions, as they feature a common local ingredient that is nevertheless nearly impossible to find in commercial supermarkets, and because much of the preparation consists of tasks that the children can accomplish safely and independently. During the independent work period, the children had the option of performing Practical Life tasks that consisted of preparing the ingredients for the pesto.

Some of them chose to crack walnuts, carefully slice garlic scallions with child-sized cleavers (a variation on the traditional Montessori children's house "Cutting Carrots" lesson), or grind fragrant herbs (rosemary, thyme, oregano, and star anise) with a mortar and pestle.

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!

Dirt is for Digging

"Of course we must adapt according to conditions, but ideally there is a light airy classroom that opens into a lovely yard, and the children have the freedom to be inside or outside as they wish.

The yard should contain both a cultivated and a wild part. It should consist of a lawn, a flower garden, and a place for the children to plant. There should be appropriate tools, real adult tools with short handles, and a shed to clean and store them."

-Maria Montessori

Upon their return from Spring Break, the children were delighted to find that the seeds they started had begun to germinate.

Today marked the children's first day in the newly constructed garden! Young children are sensorial explorers; as a result, all Montessori cultural units begin with a concrete experience which engages all of the child's senses.

As a group, the children received a detailed orientation to the new garden. To commence our gardening, and our unit on annelids (segmented worms), the children began by turning over a small plot of dirt to see what animals live in the soil. The children were very excited to find a large variety of earthworms, some millipedes, and some earthworm cocoons!

Children are consummate naturalists! The children collected some (57!) earthworms. They measured the worms and closely observed the parts of the worms, how they moved, and their reaction to light. Many of the children wanted to feel the worms wriggle in the palms of their hands, while others preferred to observe at a distance. After a bit, they released the worms back into the plot and watched them scrunch back into their burrows.

For the rest of the day, the vast majority of the children abandoned the swingset and sandbox in favor of working in the garden, digging for worms, or transporting loads of dirt to no place in particular in the wheelbarrow. This might be surprising to some people, but not to a trained Montessorian! One of Dr. Montessori's most astute observations of children was that they prefer actual work to pretend or unstructured play. Dr. Montessori created a large variety of Practical Life activities which invite the child to carry out activities that imitate the way that an adult uses familiar objects to carry out a real task. These activities are uniquely adapted to the child's interests and lure the child into mental and physical activity because they contain the promise of taking part in real adult work; however, there is one crucial difference- because the activity meets the child's needs, they are driven to repeat the work, even though it serves no external purpose.

Later, the children learned about composting and christened the new bin with it's first load of lunch scraps.

Gardening and composting are considered "Care of the Environment" activities. They permit children to contribute positively to the classroom community and to the social group (creating an authentic sense of self-esteem), and demonstrates our confidence in, and respect for, the child by permitting them to take part in "important work."