The Montessori Camp

Little hearts learning big lessons this Ramadan. 🌙

Patience. Sharing. Gratitude. 🕊️

Ramadan Mubarak from TMC. 🕌💫✨

The wait is finally over… Aunty Shazia’s Summer Program is back and better than ever! Fun, learning, and unforgettable memories await your little ones. Let the summer adventures begin!

👩🏻‍🏫 ☀️📚📖🧩 📖 📚🌈

How to Nurture Creative Writing in Your Child 📝

1. Establish a Cozy Writing Space:
Designate a special time and place for writing that feels comfortable and inviting for your child.

2. Embrace Your Child’s Ideas:
Show genuine interest in what your child wants to express; every idea is valuable.

3. Support Dictation:
If they prefer speaking their thoughts, happily jot them down. This can help them feel heard and validated.

4. Be Patient with Mistakes:
Let your child know it’s okay to make mistakes while writing; every error is a learning opportunity.

5. Offer Gentle Guidance:
If they seem stuck, ask thoughtful questions that encourage them to explore their thoughts further.

6. Take It One Step at a Time:
Work through their ideas together, focusing on one sentence at a time to help them gain confidence.

7. Encourage Diverse Writing Styles:
Help your child see the beauty in all types of writing—poems, stories, letters, or even comics—so they can explore their creativity freely.

8. Celebrate Their Unique Voice:
Encourage your child to express themselves in their style; their voice is what makes their writing special.

By nurturing their creativity with kindness and understanding, you can help spark a lifelong love of writing in your child.

Why Our Strongest Kindergarten Readers Are Not Always Our Strongest Writers: Straight from the Classroom

–Internal vs. External Production: Reading and comprehending typically begin as internal experiences while writing begins internally but is ultimately external. Writing requires a certain level of physical output and production. Not all children are as comfortable with creating and making things no matter the strength of their reading ability.

–Time Spent Writing at Home: Young children (and probably most children in general) spend more time reading and being read to at home than writing at home. Of course having strong reading habits at home is essential and incredible, but it is much less likely for a young child to have similarly strong writing habits at home, and may not have developed the same comfort level with writing as they have with reading.

–Decoding vs. Encoding: A child who can decode cannot always encode. A child who can look at letters to sound them out may have a very different experience when trying to hear the sounds in a word and organize them into letters or letter patterns on the page.

–Confidence / Self-Consciousness: Not every child feels confident as a writer. Some children who love to read get nervous or anxious when the spotlight is on them and suddenly they are the author, not the audience.

A strong reader may be an emergent writer, and that’s absolutely OK! In fact, our job as an adult is to meet each and every child where they are. It can be tricky or confusing when there is a wide disparity between a student’s reading and writing abilities. The most important thing is that we don’t assume that just because a child is far along on their reading journey, that they should be just as far along on their writing journey. The skills and strategies that make a child a fantastic reader do not necessarily correspond with those that make them a strong or comfortable writer. While the two paths have some overlapping commonalities, they are most certainly not one and the same.

Have you witnessed the power of phonograms? 💪🏽

As our children master phonograms, they become more self-reliant in their ability to decode words, which is an incredible step towards greater independence.👩🏻‍🏫

Share your stories, and let's keep spreading the joy, and knowledge, and teach phonics the right way. 🤓

📚 📚🌈

I would like to expose a situation. If your children (or grandchildren) don’t learn to play with children with special needs at school, maybe you should spend 10 minutes tonight explaining it to them. Because, although they don't currently live with these children at school, they will find them in their lives for sure.
In light of recent events regarding the exclusion of a child with autism from attending a school trip and a child with Down Syndrome being expelled from dance class because she couldn't keep up with it, I feel the need to share this. There are boys and girls that no one invites to birthday parties. There are special children who want to be part of a team but are not selected because it's more important to win than to include these children. Kids with special needs aren't weird, they just want what everyone wants: to be accepted!

Can I ask a question?

Is there anyone willing to copy and paste this post on their wall without sharing it, like I did, for all the special children out there?

Please teach your children to be kind to these beautiful children!

Everyone needs love and kindness.