As you talk with your children each day, there are tons of ways you can help them be more successful in their early childhood education. Most of these ways are simple and cost you nothing more than what your children crave from you the most…your time and attention.

                First of all, talk with your children. Answer their questions. Ask them questions. Pretend with your children. Tell stories. Ask your children to tell you stories. Read with them EVERY DAY....

Are you looking for the best gift for your child/children? The answer is so easy. Just read aloud to and with your child every day. Reading aloud has so many benefits. First of all, brain research shows that hearing stories strengthens the part of the brain associated with visual imagery, story comprehension, and word meaning. “Reading aloud is the single most important activity for building knowledge for their eventual success in reading” according to the Becoming...

For many of our parents the beginning of parent-school interaction, Montessori is new. A few parents attended a Montessori school (including our own!) as a child but most take a leap of faith that the Method best serves the developmental needs of their children. Any faith can be tried by a number of factors—classroom techniques that seem counter-intuitive, a child’s perception that may differ every-so-slightly from the facts, and sometimes mistakes teachers, student...

Today we started the first day of our school year. The temperature was 80°F, expected to soar to 104°F, presumably including the heat index. Some people might ask why we start so early, in the middle of summer.

Traditional 180-day school calendars have started in August or September and end in May or June to allow children to be available for the spring planting and harvest—in New England! Of course, we’re not in New England and very few of our families farm—and most...

As teachers we have all come across a student who just has a hard time learning numbers; so when I came across an article written by Lily Jones, the founder of CuriosityPack.com, a company which provides fun educational activities to help inspire a love of learning for kids, I was very curious to see what she had to say. She wrote that kids start working to understand mathematical ideas at a very young age, and gave the following examples for a better understanding....

On Monday we sent home a flyer for the SC READY standardized test, and it has led to some questions I’d like to answer. Taking standardized tests is part of the reality of public schools, and our students are no exception. One parent asked me if she should be doing something to prepare her child. The answer, beyond engaging with your child at home (reading together, for example), is mostly no.

In Montessori we don’t teach to the test; we prepare children for life. Yo...

At Montessori Schools everywhere the classrooms are filled with child size materials; Maria Montessori designed it this way so the children can do for themselves. Choosing the right shoes for your child is important to support the development of independence, so your child can also do for him or herself. Now-a-days we have so many varieties of shoes and we don’t always make the right choices for the child. Our choices are sometimes based on the style and the cutenes...