Tulip Tree Montessori

How do you show love to your students?

This week we released our butterflies!! 🐛🦋 This is always my ✨favorite✨ day of the entire school year. The children light up with wonder and delight. And the pictures are always worth a thousand words. 📸♥️

Does this resonate with you? What else would you add?

Shame + blame are out 👎🏼 "when...then..." statements are in! 👍🏼

This simple sentence structure can transform the way you communicate with young children. Don't forget to follow through with what you said! 😉

This week has been a bit emotional for me. I shared some news about a shift to my program (highlighted above if you missed it), my daughter finished her second year of preschool and is officially a kindergartener now 🥹, and of course I started my period. TMI, but this is just real life folks!

The children loved all of the mud created by the thunderstorms early this week. We brought foot washing back out, all of our caterpillars are now butterflies 🐛🦋, and we wrapped up a month of waffle making. Next week we enter our final four weeks of the school year and I'm just feeling SO MANY FEELS.

Okay, I'm going to stop before I start crying again. 😭

Normalize not "doing it all" 📢 so that parents can learn from us what it means to be humble.

Eleven years ago when I first stepped into the classroom, I felt intimidated af to "know it all" and be able to do it all on the first day.

I felt like I had to...

Have the perfect shelf work
Have the most attentive group time
Have the most calm lunches
Have the answers to all of the parent questions
Have the entire curriculum memorized and mastered
Have behavior and emotional literacy down pat
Have the day flow smoothly from day one
Have zero hiccups or shortcomings or flaws

Gosh, did I set myself up for failure with that mentality. 😂

My dear sweet new teachers. You don't know it all, and that's okay. I'm going to let you in on a little secret.

✨ Neither do I ✨

Education and leading a classroom has a massive learning curve. The scope of the role you've just entered is bigger than you imagined. That doesn't mean you're bad at your job or weren't cut out for this type of work. It just means you're new....just like the youngest children in your classroom.

✌🏼

Tell me - how many years have you been in the classroom? Are you a lead teacher or an assistant aspiring to be a lead?

I'm obsessed with toddlers.

And while you don't have to be, you're likely here because you either have a toddler of your own or teach toddlers.

One of the biggest game changes for me, as a toddler teacher and mom, was learning how to set up a learning space that called out to the child.

In Montessori, we use this fancy word called the Prepared Environment. But all this really means is a space, literally any space, that has been intentionally designed to inspire meaningful exploration, a strong sense of self, and development of life skills.

This goes beyond your child's playroom.

You can prepare your...

Living room
Dining room
Bedroom
Kitchen
Bathroom
Entryway
Car
Outdoor area

Any space your child uses should have some sort of invitation to engage. This is one simple way to communicate to your child that they ✨BELONG✨ And feeling worthy of belonging is the first step towards building self esteem.

I digress...

This week was sprinkled with rain and deep focus. The children are working with such intention and grace this time of year. They don't really need us teachers that much anymore, and while it's sad to know many will be moving to new schools soon, I'm filled with joy and pride seeing them all thriving!♥️