Maria Montessori School

Welcome back to another amazing year at Maria Montessori School!

Don’t forget to mark this special day with a stop at our entrance sign; a beloved tradition for our families over the years 💛

Independence begins in childhood.

“The child who has never learned to act alone, to direct his own actions, to govern his own will, grows into an adult who is easily led and must always lean upon others.”
— Dr. Maria Montessori

In Montessori environments, children are given real opportunities to make choices, solve problems, and take responsibility for their actions. This isn't just philosophy — it's supported by research.

A groundbreaking study published in Science (Lillard & Else-Quest, 2006) found that children in Montessori classrooms demonstrated significantly better self-discipline, social cognition, and executive functioning than those in traditional settings. These are exactly the kinds of skills that lead to independence — not just in school, but throughout life.

By supporting autonomy early, we’re helping children become capable, confident adults who don’t simply follow the crowd — they lead with purpose.

Music is an integral part of a Montessori environment, yet it’s often mistakenly seen as a subject that requires a specialist, resulting in disrupted work cycles. Dr. Montessori, however, believed that music should be easily accessible to children as an integrated part of their environment. Music is an essential and universal form of human expression. Darwin even suggested that music predates speech.

Music also stimulates the emotional centres of the brain, which is why we link songs to life events. We’ve all had a beautiful memory triggered after hearing just a few notes from a song, haven’t we? While we are born with a universal capacity for music, we prune certain aspects based on the cultural experiences to which we are exposed during the first years of life. To retain that capacity, it’s essential that we expose children under the age of 6 to a wide variety of music.

Dr. Montessori collaborated with trained musician, Anna Maccheroni to create music materials. Their goal for the Children’s House was to create materials that met the needs of the absorbent mind and the sensitive period for refinement of perception.

The Montessori bells were created to:

🎵 Represent pitch in a concrete form
🎵 Isolate pitch
🎵 Offer a hands-on, sensorial experience
🎵 Be limited in scope (one octave)

The bells consist of two sets, each with 13 bells arranged in a chromatic scale from middle C, covering a full octave. Made from high-quality metal, they produce clear, resonant tones, helping children discriminate the pitches. This is crucial not only for further musical study but will also support the discrimination of speech sounds and the child’s language development overall. The bells sit on the green boards, giving the child an impression of the position of each bell in the scale and of the scale pattern.

Typically used by children ages 3.5-6, the bells are first explored using a small mallet and a damper to dampen the sound. Once the child has worked through the sensorial presentations, they are introduced to the musical staff and to notation. Learning to write and then read music follows a similar path to literacy.

Beyond auditory skills, the bells promote concentration, coordination, and independence as children focus on the task, coordinate their hands and eyes, and care for the materials. Most importantly, they spark joy in the classroom!

We're thrilled to be collaborating with our friends at Wintergreen Learning Materials who are offering a $200.00 discount on the beautiful Nienhuis bells until February 17th. https://tinyurl.com/amicbelloffer

On this day 83 years ago, Dr. Maria Montessori paused to reflect on the creation of the first Casa dei Bambini, in 1907.

She described to her students on the second Indian Montessori training course that the first children came to the Casa “undernourished, dirty and uneducated.” “And these very small children, from three to six did wonderful things. They gave wonderful revelations. All these revelations to learn how to write and to read by themselves they gave at such a young age, and in the midst of joy there was a transformation of their character. They received all kinds of people: ministers, queens, university professors with the greatest ease of manner, and they became, we might say, the centre of the interest of the world. Their fame spread, and people began to cross the oceans to visit just this group of poor children.”

"I of course keep in my heart the memory of these small children. Why were they capable of giving us so many revelations that they render us capable today, even after more than 35 years, to understand the soul of the children? I do not want to enter too much into this, but certainly it was not because of our method of education, because this method then did not exist. You must understand that it was not the Montessori method which caused this revelation, because the method did not exist: it came from these revelations, and when you have understood that, you have understood a great deal”.

Text credit: https://montessori150.org/news/first-casa-dei-bambini

Fostering independence at a young age is at the heart of Montessori education. Inviting children to walk into school on their own nurtures their self-confidence and sets the foundation for empowered, capable individuals from the start.

At MMS, we look forward to welcoming your children into the school each day. We hope everyone has a wonderful start into the week!

Happy Birthday, Dr. Maria Montessori! Today, we celebrate the visionary who revolutionized education and ignited a passion for lifelong learning. Thank you for your advocacy for the rights of the child, and your global vision for peace and social justice. May your legacy continue to inspire for many generations to come.

If anyone is considering a family trip to Europe this summer...

Thank you to the Association Montessori Internationale -Canada, CAMT, and to the incredible guest speakers Paula Lillard Preschlack, Sandra Girlato, Greg MacDonald, Erin Smith, and Gretchen Hall for all your efforts in putting together an amazing conference this past Saturday. Our staff are feeling so inspired and grateful!

A HUGE thank you to everyone that joined us at the "Celebrating Montessori's Potential" conference on Saturday! Our hearts are still full from the camaraderie, the sharing of stories, the singing and laughter. Our ask at the beginning of the day was that we all open our hearts and minds to each other and you certainly did just that. Hopefully you are able to carry that joy with you as you return to your important work. We are so grateful to all of you!

Let's make sure the conversation doesn't stop here. Community is SUCH an important part of our work. Build it where you can, reach out when you need, and remember that our door is always open to everyone. Looking forward to seeing you all again...hopefully soon!

We look forward to welcoming Primary Director of Training for the Foundation for Montessori Education Sandra Girlato this Wednesday for a special Parent Evening on Sensorial Development and its connection to Intellectual growth. We hope to see you there! Inquire at the Office for more details :)

The Sensorial materials aid the child's ability to perceive qualities that help to build their intellect. This in turn helps the child to be more precise in their observations. Which leads ultimately to their ability to think critically and imagine new things.

Today the Montessori community celebrates Maria Montessori's birthday! On 31 August 1915, on her 45th birthday, Maria Montessori was working in America, addressing her students in a graduation speech as they were about to receive their diplomas from the training course. She shared the following thoughts with that cohort: “I feel that the course has ended to start something definite for the good of this work. You must work with great courage, without timidity.”

We are grateful that the Montessori community is continuing this mission with unequalled energy and passion 💙

A Maria Montessori full of smiles, surrounded by flowers. It well could have been a birthday photo, but taken where and when? Can you help us source this photograph? It may be England, it may be the 1920s, but we could be wrong. Please write to us at [email protected] to share any details and suggestions.

Children in our Montessori environments are allowed to move freely and choose their own activity for this very reason. When a child chooses an activity from interest, which engages both the mind and the body, that interest leads the child to deep concentration. It is from concentration that they learn to persevere and to become self-disciplined. So, it is from the use of the body and the mind together that the child undergoes the process of becoming.