Too Young for School?
I'm Aubrey Hargis, Montessorian and mom of two. Montessori education has my whole heart. Because I've seen how it promotes joyful, independent learning among children of all ages, I have implemented this method in my own home as a homeschooler. And it's not always easy, but it's worth it. Because education is a journey that we take with our children, and the opportunities for learning start over every day.
Hey Sweet Friend
Welcome back! It has been a few weeks since we've had an episode, we paused to have time to take in the sun. I did some traveling! I hope you have been recovering a bit from anything that has been plaguing you for the past year and a half or so. I feel like all of us are kind of going through this decompression phase and are still on alert. Not sure if we're safe, yet but feeling a little bit better in our communities.
As we ease into the Fall, I know a lot of families are not sending their children back to school, they will be choosing to homeschool. For my part, I think school is great...I am always going to be an advocate of schools. As a homeschooler myself, I am thrilled! I'm super excited that so many of you are going to take this incredible homeschooling journey. And this time, it's unlike the pandemic where most of you were forced out of the school situation and kind of forced into homeschooling. This time, many more families will be choosing to homeschool because they are excited about the flexibility that it can offer families. It’s a different lifestyle that you have as a homeschooling family when you are not tied down to very rigid schedules.
It is an honor to be the gateway for so many families who are choosing the Montessori method when they are taking a look at their curriculum options. My children have always been homeschooled. What I do these days is continue to homeschool my children (ages 11 and 14 now -- summer birthdays happen so fast). I also teach Montessori homeschooling courses online and create curriculum for homeschoolers all over the world who are interested in taking the Montessori approach deeper. We do not do surface level at Child of the Redwoods! We go right down into the core philosophy that Maria Montessori herself developed along with other progressive educators and philosophical thinkers of her time. Their work amalgamated into this ahead of her time progressive approach to education. We dig into that, step by step, and take a look at the practical things that we can do at home to help our children have a joyful, curious approach to all of life. That is what we call “school.”
In honor of it being this brand new academic school year, I would like to invite you to a free workshop! I'm going to be telling my personal Montessori homeschooling story, I'm going to lay down some truth bombs to boost your confidence, and we're going to dig into the pesky but super important conversation about socialization. Homeschoolers are no weirder than kids who go to school, I promise, and our communities tend to focus on social activities. You're going to get a lot of support inside this workshop. My goal is to send you off into the school year feeling awesome. And at the end, if you want to stick around, I'll tell you about my eight-week live coaching session that is coming up for Homeschool of the Redwoods-Primary for children 2.5 through 6. I will go into how you can make Montessori, the spine of your homeschool journey if you choose to take it. If you're already on my email list, you'll get an invitation to this automatically, but if you are not connected and you're not on my list, you can sign up to attend this free workshop at www.childoftheredwoods.com/join
Meet Anastasia
Today we’re introducing you to Anastasia, a Montessori mom of one, living in Indonesia! Anastasia is an alumnus of both Homeschool of the Redwoods Primary AND Elementary, and she has her own business consulting families in her local area about preparing Montessori environments at home. You can learn more about her here!
Is My Child Too Young for School?
As soon as my baby was crawling around, other parents started asking: when are you going to put your child in toddler school? What school will your child go to? I just wasn't quite ready to make those decisions...my baby was so little. But that's really when I started hearing from other parents about school.
Well, I was a teacher at a private Montessori School the year before I had my baby, and I was planning to go back and teach. I had this opportunity open up to teach in their toddler program, and my little 14 month old at the time was just a little too young for the program. The children were supposed to be 18 months by the time they enter that program, and he was only 14 months, and he wasn't walking yet. He was still very, very little.
Still, I got to start the school year teaching toddlers that year in the Montessori classroom after going and getting some training specifically in infants and toddlers. This was a wonderful, wonderful experience for me and my child. It was a hard experience. I have both kinds of feelings about it. I'm glad that I did it because I learned so much more about Montessori than I knew before, having taught in the elementary part of the program and then going back down and teaching toddlers. It was a completely new experience. It was so exciting and so empowering for me as a parent, and it was also exhausting.
I'd come home around 12:30, and I would have the afternoons with my son at home. The thing about my child going to school with me was that we had been going to all these lovely little playgroups, but then in the afternoons, I was just too tired to have social time after working in the mornings at the school. It changed my life. Eventually, I was able to stop working again and stay home with my second and then just transitioned into being a full-time homeschooler. I feel like this was a really good thing for me all around. You know, I had this really intense and very interesting experience teaching toddlers in the classroom...and then I was just ready to transition into being at home full time with them. This is what I did. And I call both school.
What is School?
Not everybody around me called it school. I didn't make a ton of money teaching toddlers part-time, and I think not everybody understood what I was doing. They knew that I was working with toddlers and assumed I was babysitting, or maybe doing daycare. Those of you who come from a Montessori background, know that what we do in the classroom is different. There's a method to all of these lessons that you give, and yes, even little toddlers are ready for a lot of these lessons. Lessons look differently for toddlers than they do for the primary children, but the teaching of the classroom was probably the hardest I've ever worked in a classroom. I am saying that after teaching kindergarten in public school, and after teaching fourth grade and public school, I taught third, I've taught second. And then I taught the elementary years in a private Montessori School. The hardest by far was teaching toddlers because what they required was so much more of my immediate presence, and my ability to think quickly and make really fast decisions. Whereas with an elementary child, you can kind of talk things through, with a very young child you don't have the time to think things through or to talk things through. You've got to make a decision and follow through with it right then.
I remember this one time when I went to take my child to the pediatrician. She looked at me and said “So how long has your son been in daycare? Or have you been a daycare teacher?” I replied: “I don't teach in a daycare. I'm not a daycare teacher.” And she said: “Well, you said that your child goes to daycare?” And I said, “No, I said, my child goes to a Montessori toddler school.” And she says, “Oh…” and then she puts this funny fire smile on her face, and says “So at this daycare school that you send your child to…”
And at that point, I realized that she completely did not respect my work or my child's learning. There is kind of a duality here. I think I think on one side, there's this push for younger children to grow up sooner. We want our children to be smarter. And we're obsessed with it. So we want them to go to school sooner, and we want them to learn their ABCs sooner, and we want them to learn to count sooner. If they could do that in first grade, they could probably do it in kindergarten, why not preschool? Well, if they can do it in preschool, why not when they are toddlers? If you could teach your toddler how to read, why not teach your baby how to read.
There's this push for younger children to just grow up a little sooner. In this way, thinking of your toddler being in a school can be kind of toxic. Toddlers shouldn't be pushed, they should just be allowed to be themselves-- to run around, follow their instincts, eat when they're hungry, learn about toileting, and all the things that toddlers need to learn to do. To sit down on the grass, look at bugs, run around, and learn how to move their bodies. That is what a toddler is supposed to be doing. I 100% agree with that. I think children are often very rushed in modern society.
The problem is not that children don't need school or don't need education. It's that we have the wrong idea about what a toddler needs for their education or what their school should be. Montessori provides the kind of school that children need at that age, the kind of education that is meaningful to them. What is the toddler doing? They are learning to communicate. They're listening to us to hear the new vocabulary words that we might be using that they don't know yet. Their brains are rapidly acquiring all of this information. They're also really interested in categorizing their world. “This is the kitchen. And these are the things that go in the kitchen. And all of these things, forks, spoons, knives, are a grouping of things. And they are tools that we use to eat.” So that's what a toddler is doing. They're categorizing their world. They're listening to us. They're wanting us to talk a lot to them. That is what should be going on inside a toddler school! Toddlers should be moving, they should be playing the way that they normally play because that's what helps their gross motor movement.
Yes, That Is School
I think what my pediatrician didn't understand was that school doesn't necessarily mean academics. It could mean academics; if your child is ready to learn how to read, yes, then that would be part of school, that's part of education. But for a toddler, that's not necessarily what will be happening at school.
I feel personally like school billing begins at birth, like, if school is a place that we educate our children, our very first school is wherever your baby is: if your baby is at a daycare, then that's your baby's school. If you're at home with your child, your child's first school is at home. So you start off homeschooling your child right off the bat if your child is at home with you. Then, it's a choice whether to send your child to a school that is facilitated in a different place other than the home, but it's still a place where education is supposed to happen.
When we change our point of view to thinking of school as a place where children are educated, school could be anywhere! School could be the playground, school could be your living room, school could be your bathrooms, school could be a grandma's house. We can start seeing the child more clearly, and our role in their education as a teacher. Teachers aren't just people who are trained to teach in a specific educational setting. Teachers are all over the place: grandma, grandpa, our teachers, aunts, uncles, all those cousins that are older...family and the community around you are a part of your teaching team, too. If you ever have a babysitter, that person is part of your teaching community. If you go visit someplace in your community, that stranger that you met becomes a teacher for your child, if they take the time to engage with your child in a different environment.
Homeschooling is just a very natural school. It's a natural way of seeing our children being educated in this world. A physical school or a daycare could be part of your child's school education experience, but it doesn’t necessarily have to! I would like to see the definition of school broaden because I can say without a doubt that when I see a Montessori school and I know that it follows Maria Montessori’s guiding principles, it is going to be a healthy place for toddlers. I know they're going to be teaching those toddlers things that toddlers naturally have the desire to learn.
Your Child is Never Too Young
So my answer is your child is NEVER too young for school. As soon as you have a baby and they're born, your child is being educated in this world. Even if you intend to send your child to school down the road, there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn't continue your learning journey at home. As your child's teacher, even if your child is going to attend a school, or daycare, or another place outside of the home, it's still your responsibility to understand your child's development. It is also just super fun to learn how these teaching techniques that those of us who have been working with children for a long time and or are trained in the Montessori method can share with you.
I'm happy to talk about all of that kind of stuff--all the tips and tricks! You can find it all in the course, and if you continue listening to this podcast, I will continue to give you little tips and tricks along the way and you can piece it all together. I am rooting for you! I am in your corner.
