Showing 8 of 43 articles
MontessoriHow to Keep Children Connected to Nature: Six Small Habits at Home
Our recent pilot study of 81 children found something that most parents already sense but rarely see confirmed. When children are given a piece of paper and asked to draw a place where life can exist, 77.5 percent draw nature. Trees, the sun, water, animals, and sky, in that order. This piece answers a different […]
MMunira Hussain6 min
Micro ResearchWhat Do Children Draw When Asked About Life? Trees and the Sun
Some research findings surprise us. Others confirm what most parents already sense but have never had the numbers to say out loud. This one is the second kind. What do children draw when a prompt does not tell them what to draw? When we asked eighty-one children at Blue Blocks Montessori School to draw a […]
PPavan Goyal5 min
EducationHow to Stop Force Feeding Your Toddler (and What to Do Instead)
How to stop force feeding your toddler is one of the most common questions we hear from parents at Blue Blocks, and the answer is not what most parents expect. If you have ever chased your toddler around the room with a spoon, bribed her with a screen to finish her plate, or negotiated one […]
MMunira Hussain6 min
MontessoriHow to Create a Positive Mealtime Environment for Your Child
Dinner in your house. The television is on in the corner. Your phone sits next to your plate. Your toddler is pushing rice around. You have said “one more bite” three times already. Your partner is scrolling. No one is looking at each other. This is what most mealtimes look like in most homes. And […]
PPavan Goyal6 min
MontessoriHow to Teach Your Toddler to Eat by Themselves: The Montessori Way
Your child is three years old, and you are still holding the spoon. You have tried letting her feed herself. Half the food ended up on the floor. So you went back to helping. This piece is about how to teach your toddler to eat by themselves, and why the environment matters more than the […]
PPavan Goyal6 min
Child DevelopmentMy Toddler Eats One Day and Not the Next: Why This Is Normal, What to Watch For
Your toddler ate almost nothing at lunch. You felt it in your chest before you finished clearing the plate. You wonder if she is unwell, or bored with the food, or whether something happened at school you do not know about. Yesterday she ate everything. Today she ate two bites. Nothing else has changed. If […]
PPavan Goyal6 min
EducationTeaching Children to Think Before Answering: What Montessori Calls the Art of Stepping Back
Teaching children to think before answering is one of the quieter skills a school can build, and one of the hardest for parents to protect at home. Most days, we do the opposite by accident. A child pauses at a question, and we fill the pause for her. We prompt, we suggest, we soften, […]
MMunira Hussain7 min
Child DevelopmentWhen Children Teach Adults: How Montessori Builds Real Understanding
When children teach adults something the adult did not know before, most parents assume the child in front of them is unusually gifted. A born presenter. A rehearsed talker. We think this reading gets the child wrong, and it gets the school wrong too. The reversal that surprises parents at our events, when the child […]
MMunira Hussain9 min