Yesterday, February 8th, our Montessori House parents joined children in all our classes for  the best Lunar New Year celebrations.  With stories, costumes, food, and more, our children had a chance to learn about and experience different aspects of this traditional holiday celebrated throughout East Asia.

Thanks to all the parents who were able to join us!

Here are just a few of our children outfitted for the holiday …

Celebrating Lunar New Year 2016 at The Montessori House

The Montessori House is open on the normal schedule today, February 5th.  Local weather conditions vary; parents should use their own judgement as to whether their children can come to school safely today.  Parents should feel free to keep children home or arrive late; especially if the snow in the yard is suitable for building a snow-boy or snow girl, or for making snowballs!

School picture packages may be picked up starting today — in your child’s folder.

If your family is interested in exploring a scholarship (a.k.a. financial aid) at The Montessori House for the school year starting September, 2020 (2020-21 school year), now is the time to start the process.

(Note, scholarships are no longer available for the current school year that startede September, 2019.)

First, you apply to The Montessori House: please have a look at our Admissions section.  If you haven’t visited the school, we suggest you call us to arrange a tour for yourself (we recommend you come for a tour during the school day without your child, if possible).  Please call or text us at 201-816-8343 to arrange a time.

Starting now you can prepare your scholarship application to Friends of Montessori Foundation.  Your application needs to be completed before March 15, 2020 (for scholarships for the school year starting September, 2020).

Scholarships are provided by The Friends of Montessori Foundation, and they consider your financial need as well as the depth of their own resources when making scholarship decisions.

Note, if you receive an award, it will be be subject to verification of information you submitted; for example receipt and evaluation of 2019 tax returns that you may not have sent to FoM in March.

If Friends of Montessori Foundation cannot meet your calculated need, then you may choose to withdraw and receive a refund of any tuition deposits you may have provided The Montessori House (but no refund of your application fee).  However, if the Foundation meets your need (or determines that you have not demonstrated a financial need), then you would not be eligible for a tuition refund if you decide to withdraw.

Of course, before deciding to reserve a place for your child with a deposit, you can wait to hear from the Foundation regarding your scholarship.  But, without a reservation in place, by we may have filled up your preferred sessions for 2020-21.

Feel free to contact us by e-mail (admissions@themontessorihouse.com) with questions.

Before enjoying today’s Thanksgiving Feast at The Montessori House, our families responded with great generosity last week to our Fall Food Drive.

We collected a record amount of in-kind food donations for the Center for Food Action(CFA)  in Englewood.

With the help of many parents, we had a caravan of parent cars, full of our Kindergarten/First Grade children and donations, make their way down Knickebocker Ave. to the CFA.  Once there, the children helped unload and also received a tour of the facility and some explanation of how their donations will help neighbors in need.

Thanks to all our Montesori House families for their generosity.

First, thanks to the more than 30 parents who volunteered to help with Fall Celebration this year.  Everyone had a great time!

On Tuesday October 27th all the students at The Montessori House had a chance to join in our Fall Celebration.  Parents helped us set up and operate all kinds of activities, such as Pumpkin Bowling), Tractor Driving, and Planting Spring Bulbs, plus yummy snacks.

Mother Nature graced us with a beautiful fall day (and dry weather for Monday’s set-up and Tuesday’s Celebration).

Elizabeth (mother of Lilly and Charlotte and a terrific leader for our Snack Committee) sent us a few photos, which you can see in the Parents section of the website (if you have a Parent ID/Passwordk, log on and then click on Photo Galleries, 2015 Fall Celebration is at the top of the list).

The next volunteer opportunity:  Thanksgiving Feast.  Parents will receive and e-mail with details and sign-up instructions.

Many of our teachers attended a presentation in Tenafly last week by Dr. Denise Pope (Stanford) titled “The Well-Balanced Student”.  Both the Tenafly and Cresskill public schools  sponsored the talk along with RHOWR (Rational HOmeWork Review), a group of Tenafly parents connected about the role of homework among the stressors impacting their children.

Dr. Pope is particularly interested in student voices and the students’ perspectives of school. She focuses on academic stress and its consequences for students’ mental, physical, and spiritual well-being. She authored “Doing School”: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students (Yale University Press, 2001) and directed the SOS: Stressed Out Student (2003-2008) which has become Challenge Success: which focuses on strategies for healthy, engaged kids and recently published Overworked and Underprepared.

Ms. Maria thought the following points were of particular interest:

• Unstructured play time is the most important factor in developing children’s creativity, enjoyment of learning, and lifetime mental health.  Tis is true for children from pre-school through high-school.  (Play time and social time — time with no instructional purpose, not music lessons, art lessons, organized sports, tutoring, etc.)  Dr. Pope described it as part of Playtime, Downtime, Familytime (PDF), which constitute the protective factors for children (ensuring they grow up to be healthy, well-adjusted adults).
• More homework and after-school tutoring does not lead to improved learning.  In fact, some students become “robo students” who may be excellent at getting good grades  and test scores, but are disengaged, unable to solve complex problems, and unable to master 21st century skills.  Dr. Pope said, “Don’t confuse rigor with load.”  More schoolwork (load) is pointless (even detrimental) if it’s not the right kind of work (rigor).
• The importance of “successful” failure.  No one can get it right the first time, every time; certainly not if they’re really learning things that are new, important, or difficult.  To learn and develop children must have the opportunity to try, fail (without consequences), and try again until they achieve competence or mastery.  (We do just that in the Montessori classroom with our Montessori works).
• Finally, SLEEP.  Dr. Pope emphasized that the most important factor for learning and mental health is adequate sleep.  She said Kindergarten 12+hours, elementary school 11+, middle school 10+, and high school 9+.  This is every day (so night sleep plus naps), not just an average over a week.  In fact, she noted that ADD/ADHD behaviors are often the result of sleep deprivation and are easily addressed (with more sleep).

At The Montessori House we already practice what Dr. Pope preached in many cases.  It’s inherent in the Montessori Method to give children the opportunity to learn (to try repeatedly until competence is achieved), also to give children control of their time (choosing works, or choosing when they need downtime or a snack), and we build in some solid play time each morning and afternoon.

We generally recommend against tutoring or math/literacy enrichment programs outside of school, and encourage parents to limit the number of structured programs children attend.  Instead we always recommend parents read to their children, play with their children, and arrange unstructured play with friends outside of school (or in our After Care program).  And we couldn’t agree more with Dr. Pope on the importance of sleep — we see the difference it makes in our students’ behavior and ability to learn.

We often think of children at school only in the happiest sense, playing and exploring together, finding joy in their discoveries, and enjoying time with their friends. But a classroom, like the world outside it, is a mix of personalities, with varying maturity levels, backgrounds, expectations, and abilities. Sometimes those personalities clash, that happy setting is disrupted by conflict, and the children involved in the conflicts need to navigate their way back to a peaceful setting. Fortunately, teachers of young children are in a special position to teach children the peacemaking skills they need to resolve their conflicts and manage their anger, both now and in the future.

Action Research conducted by our Director,  Maria Morningstar, explored the various types and sources of classroom and playground conflicts, and the effects of a peace curriculum in reducing and resolving those conflicts.  The purpose of  her study was to determine whether teaching children about peace would help them to reduce or resolve conflicts in the classroom.

The study took place in a suburban Montessori classroom of 26 children, ages three to six years.  The data collected included observations of children’s conflicts and resolutions, conferences with the children and teachers, and children’s journal writings.

The results:  as the peace curriculum was implemented, there was a clear reduction in the number of daily conflicts among the children, and children involved in conflicts shifted from requiring a lot of teacher involvement to resolve their conflicts to needing little or no teacher involvement in the resolution.

You may access the research abstract, presentation slides, or the entire study here: SOPHIA: The Effects of a Peace Curriculum on Reducing and Resolving Conflicts among Children Ages 3-6 Years