Edible Garden

Kiddie Toes Montessori School (KTMS) envisions to provide its learners a natural playground that would them about the connections between food, health and the environment. Aside from our efforts in making the school “green” and environment-friendly, we also hope that children will learn about healthful and natural food, and how important it is for the body. Thus, we have developed and incorporated the “Edible Garden” into the project approach of our Lower Elementary curriculum.

With the Edible Garden project, the learners were involved in the daily process of soil enrichment, growing and harvesting herbs and vegetables, as well as taking care of the plants. In these photos, the Fourth Grade Learners took charge of planting Pechay (Bok Choy). They were deeply involved in watering their crops and taking care of the same. They were also made to experience harvesting their plants.

After harvesting, the Pechay were cooked and sauteed (Ginisang Pechay or Sauteed Bok Choy). The learners were then made to taste and sample their produce.

This activity does not only promote love for vegetable, and taking care of one’s health. It also promotes responsibility and accountability in terms of taking care and maintaining plants and crops.

There will be more exciting and innovative activities related to the Edible Garden in the future.

For more photos, please check the KTMS Facebook Account.

25 Ways to Just Be with your children

It’s not easy being a parent. No matter if you work outside the home, inside the home. No matter if you have one, two, three or fifteen children. No matter if you have a small house in a big city or a big house in a small city. No matter if you have money or very little money.

Raising children is hard work — at least it is if you are doing it right.

It’s really no wonder parents are spending more time than ever checking in on Facebook, smart phones, or doing project after project after project. It helps to have something to do rather than sit around and dwell on all the stuff we want to be able to do or used to be able to do but no longer can. This self-medicating with social media is harmful — as Rachel at Hands Free Mama has said so eloquently this week on her blog.

And yet our children don’t care how fancy we are as parents, or how many messages we get in an hour about our blog. The smaller they are the more they need us. The bigger they are, the more they need us. Sometimes, the more they need us, the more we want to slink away and find some blanket to crawl under. But it doesn’t have to feel that way.

Breaks for parents are absolutely essential. Absolutely.

There is a time and place for media and screens and technology. And there is a time and place for NO media and NO screens. It’s about being conscious, as a parent and a human being, about when and how we are turning to the computer or TV for simply boredom or laziness or seriously trying to avoid our lives.

To truly be awake to this life — these fleeting 18 years — we have but one choice to make each day: embrace our blessings and honor those around us. Practicing mindful choices each day is something that we have to model for our children or else they, too, will end up staring at screens all too much in their own life (like that picture above!).

There are many ways that you can just be with your children that are not hard work, that are not challenging or tiresome. By just being there, you may discover that your child will reach out to you simply because you are suddenly available. The magic in this list is that it’s just simply being together for a solid half hour or so but it offers up the most beneficial memories we can offer to children.

Here are some of our family’s favorites:

- Turn off the TV/computer/phones for one hour. (In our house, we limit daily screen time to a total of one hour except on movie nights).

- Have a work hour — they do homework and you work on a hobby like art or reading while sitting at the same table.

- Just listen to music. At our house, we call this a dance party.

- Light a candle for your children — one each.

- Surprise them with a celebration for trying hard on a test or homework and eat store bought cookies and milk.

- Sit on the couch while they play and read magazines. They will sit next to you eventually and ask, ”Whatcha reading?”

- Grab two balls and challenge everyone to find something fun to do with them outside.

- Snuggle under a blanket or put a puzzle together.

- Whip up a nice bowl of ice cream and laugh while you eat it.

- Watch TV with them if they insist on watching.

- Ask them open-ended questions about their day.

- Tell them something surprising about your day.

- Draw together, taking turns adding new lines on the same paper.

- Take a drive, taking turns picking the direction and sitting in silence as the unfamiliar landscape passes you by.

- Look at their baby photos.

- Tell them a funny story from their younger days.

- Tell them a funny story from your own childhood.

- In fact, tell them any story you can think of telling.

- Ask them to teach you how to do something. This is big. Very big.

- Ask them questions about their favorite things.

- Help them clean their room or the basement or the garage. Whatever. Lend a hand.

- Ask them for help with a problem.

- Hold a family meeting to just catch up.

- Announce that there will be no cleaning for just one day.

- Give them a coupon for a hug to use anytime they need it.


What kinds of things do you like to do with our family to just relax and be together with little expectations?


Source:
http://awesomelyawake.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/25-ways-to-just-be-with-your-children/

New Scientific Study Supports the Montessori Method

Thursday, 05 October 2006 09:27
Written by Administrator
Family Center



"new study in science magazine shows that montessori education leads to better outcomes than traditional methods"

Dr. Angeline Stoll Lillard has clearly summarized the research that explains why, after 100 years, the Montessori approach to education continues to be a phenomenal worldwide success.

Tim Seldin
President, The Montessori Foundation
Chair, The International Montessori Council



A study comparing outcomes of children at a public inner-city Montessori school with children who attended traditional schools indicates that Montessori education leads to children with better social and academic skills.

The study appears in the Sept. 29, 2006 issue of the journal Science. You can read more in a specical article and interview with Dr. Lillard that was published in the Fall 2006 issue of Tomorrow's Child magazine. Click here to download the PDF of tat article.

Montessori education is characterized by multi-age classrooms, a special set of educational materials, student-chosen work in long time blocks, a collaborative environment with student mentors, absence of grades and tests, and individual and small group instruction in academic and social skills. More than 5,000 schools in the United States, including 300 public schools, use the Montessori method.

The Montessori school studied is located in Milwaukee and serves urban minority children. Students at the school were selected for enrollment through a random lottery process. Those students who "won" the lottery and enrolled at the Montessori school made up the study group. A control group was made up of children who had "lost" the lottery and were therefore enrolled in other schools using traditional methods. In both cases the parents had entered their children in the school lottery with the hope of gaining enrollment in the Montessori school.

"This strategy addressed the concern that parents who seek to enroll their children in a Montessori school are different from parents who do not," wrote study authors Angeline Lillard, a University of Virginia professor of psychology, and Nicole Else-Quest, a former graduate student in psychology at the University of Wisconsin. This was an important factor because parents generally are the dominant influence on child outcomes.

Children were evaluated at the end of the two most widely implemented levels of Montessori education: primary (3- to 6-year-olds) and elementary (6- to 12-year-olds). They came from families of very similar income levels (averaging from $20,000 to $50,000 per year for both groups).

The children who attended the Montessori school, and the children who did not, were tested for their cognitive and academic skills, and for their social and behavioral skills.

"We found significant advantages for the Montessori students in these tests for both age groups," Lillard said. "Particularly remarkable are the positive social effects of Montessori education. Typically the home environment overwhelms all other influences in that area."

Among the 5-year-olds, Montessori students proved to be significantly better prepared for elementary school in reading and math skills than the non-Montessori children. They also tested better on "executive function," the ability to adapt to changing and more complex problems, an indicator of future school and life success.

Montessori children also displayed better abilities on the social and behavioral tests, demonstrating a greater sense of justice and fairness. And on the playground they were much more likely to engage in emotionally positive play with peers, and less likely to engage in rough play.

Among the 12-year-olds from both groups, the Montessori children, in cognitive and academic measures, produced essays that were rated as "significantly more creative and as using significantly more sophisticated sentence structures." The Montessori and non-Montessori students scored similarly on spelling, punctuation and grammar, and there was not much difference in academic skills related to reading and math. This parity occurred despite the Montessori children not being regularly tested and graded.

In social and behavioral measures, 12-year-old Montessori students were more likely to choose "positive assertive responses" for dealing with unpleasant social situations, such as having someone cut into a line. They also indicated a "greater sense of community" at their school and felt that students there respected, helped and cared about each other.

The authors concluded that, "when strictly implemented, Montessori education fosters social and academic skills that are equal or superior to those fostered by a pool of other types of schools."

Lillard plans to continue the research by tracking the students from both groups over a longer period of time to determine long-term effects of Montessori versus traditional education. She also would like to replicate the study at other Montessori and traditional schools using a prospective design, and to examine whether specific Montessori practices are linked to specific outcomes.

Lillard is the author of "Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius." More information is available at: http://www.montessori-science.org/. For a copy of the study in the journal Science, call 1-202-326-6440, or email: scipak@aaas.org .

Source:
http://www.montessori.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=286:new-scientific-study-supports-the-montessori-method&catid=73:research-supporting-the-montessori-approach&Itemid=38