Last night I had to miss yoga so we could attend Jocelyn's Parents/Teachers meeting for the Cardinals room. She hasn't moved up yet, but will in the next month or so, and it was great to hear from the teachers on the daily routine, and have more information and helpful suggestions to bridge the Montessori lifestyle from classroom to home. Everything about Montessori is so totally right on with just about all of our parenting philosophies, and how we raise and aspire to raise our children. From encouraging them to do as much for themselves as possible, from putting on their own clothes/shoes, carrying their own things/lunchbox to class every day, respecting their concentration on their work, and overall being their "scaffolding" where we observe, and are there to help guide but they are the ones figuring things out on their own.
The one area that we know we need to work on more is our screen time, I know we're not alone and theres so much guilt that comes with it (one of the teachers brought this up), but we definitely need to work on more screen-free activities, which I have been doing since I've gone back to being stay at home. More art projects, more crafts, more reading, more puzzles, and lately we've been doing iSpy books and Joss loves it. Finding the hidden objects in the pictures. Still, we do settle into being lazy and watching Netflix after a long day, which starts with our behaviors as adults - to model and pass down our own habits... so that we are definitely taking home to work on.
Moving her forward through time, seeing into the next class up I learned that they don't teach the alphabet letter names (A, B, Cs) but they teach the letter sounds. All in lower case. I think this is interesting and makes sense to help foster early reading skills. I also really appreciate the strong respect displayed by the teachers for the children's work periods, and encouragement, - also using consequences rather than discipline, and no time outs but rather 'time ins' where we talk together which is our approach at home too.
There was some reading recommendations that fell right in line with the EXACT books I just bought this past week, both of Dr. Laura Markham's books (which were mentioned several times), and of course Janet Lansbury's RIE blog (I love her! She's helped me so much how to learn to be a parent and raise my daughter). There also was an interesting reading suggestion for what to read to our children... rather than fantasy, read real life stories - which usually is seen to be for only adults but is totally in line with Montessori principals. I never really occurred to me (instead of reading a story about a talking cat, read a story about a cat that is narrated by a child, etc), there is a reading list they said they would email us parents, so I'm looking forward to checking it out. Also another reading recommendation was to read our children poetry, another example of reading that tends to be seen mostly for adults. But poetry is real, real life experiences that fosters imagination and wonderful to share with our young ones.
So I missed yoga, but as usual it was wonderful to go to Jocelyn's school and listen to her teachers speak. I'm looking forward to the next events coming up too. Today I'll do some yoga at home to keep my lower back feeling good, and overall wellness. I also decided to change our baby shower from being a pre-holiday November event (which is also right after Jocelyn's birthday), but to make it a birthday party baby shower for MY birthday in January! Its only one month before my due date, so I'll big pretty big, but I think that will be easier after all of the holidays, plus I'll also get a little birthday party with it so yay! I won't think about it now for a while until after Jocelyn's birthday, and Halloween. I still have time.
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