The Ultimate Montessori Blog

(This article is a digression from child issues, and tries to explain an interesting feature called RSS that we have added to make your blogging experience more efficient.)

The RSS feature has been added to the Ultimate Montessori Blog. If you are aware of this feature you can subscribe to it and keep abreast with the latest developments in this blog. Subscribe to The Ultimate Montessori Blog

In case you are not aware about RSS, here is an introduction presented in a question and answer form. Hope you find it useful. Note: Please do not be put off by the jargon, the RSS feature is really very simple to use. In case you do not understand the features of RSS by reading this article just go ahead and subscribe to it, and as you use the feature you will grow to understand its utility.

What is RSS?

Standing for ‘Really Simply Syndication’, RSS is also referred to as a feed. It is simply a way in which a reader may subscribe to website content, such as a blog. A blog could publish a feed that contains a series of recent posts.

Why should I use RSS?

By using RSS you can keep up-to-date with the information from websites you are interested in without having to visit each individual site. If the RSS feature is provided in a website and you happen to subscribe to it, you will have all the updated content from these sites in one place, either in a web-based aggregator or a standalone newsreader. (Web-based aggregators and newreaders are RSS reader softwares which are explained later in this article.) These softwares fetch new content as and when it is added to the website — either in the form of excerpts of the new content with links to the website, or the complete new content depending on the options fixed by the website owners and applications.

How do you know that a website, or a blog has the RSS feature?

Websites which include the RSS feature will mention it in the following terms

• RSS 2.0
• Atom
• XML feed
• RDF Feed

Or, you may see the symbol given below somewhere in the webpage. This image has become the standard representation of RSS feed

Can I access RSS feeds from my browser (Firefox, Internet Explorer, etc)

In case you are using the Firefox browser (we strongly recommend that you use this browser) you can see the RSS symbol in the address bar of the browser as shown below.

To subscribe to the RSS feed in Firefox, just click on this RSS symbol in the address bar. This will take you to a page which will give you the option to subscribe. This feature in Firefox is called Live Bookmarks and is probably the most convenient method to subscribe to RSS. Whenever you wish to access the RSS feed of the site to which you have subscribed, just go to the Bookmarks tab in the menu and select the Bookmark Toolbars Folder and there you will find all the RSS feeds you have asked for.

Internet Explorer 7.0 also has a similar method to subscribe to RSS feeds.

If you are not using Firefox as your browser, you can always download it from the following link : Download Firefox

What are the other options to subscribe and view RSS feeds?

You can also use what is called web-based aggregators, or standalone newreaders to access the RSS feeds you have subscribed to.

Standalone Newsreaders: Newsreaders are also called feed readers. They are software programs that run on your computer and let you subscribe to feeds easily and read them in one place. Some newsreaders show only the headline and summary. The more sophisticated newsreaders often work seamlessly with your browser to make viewing the webpage or blog behind the feed very easy. Subscribing to a feed with a newsreader is as simple as a click or drag from your browser.

Some popular standalone newsreaders:

• Google Reader
• Blog Lines
• Feed Reader

Web aggregator: A web aggregator is almost like a newsreader. The difference is that you must connect to the website hosting this aggregator using your browser (Firefox, IE etc). Once you log in to these sites, accessing the newsfeed is very much like with a standalone newsreader. All the updates from the websites you subscribed to will be available.

Some popular web aggregators:

• My Yahoo
• Google

To cut a long story short: Many a times reading a long document such as this may end up confusing some people. In such cases, just go ahead and subscribe to the RSS feed and you will find the process much easier than what this document makes it seem.

In Montessori Houses of Children the work is chosen by the pupil himself. The pupil seeks the work which interests him most and, therefore, ends up doing the work which is most agreeable to him. How can such a preparation fit him to take his place in social life where duty imposes tasks not always pleasant, in fact often quite contrary to the personal taste?

He who struggles, overcoming difficulties though his task my not be a pleasant one, or, in other words, he who sacrifices himself must, above all, be strong. This question, therefore, presupposes a condition which is of fundamental importance: “sine qua non” - to be strong. The spontaneous exercises which the little children do in our schools, choosing the work which they like and remaining absorbed in it for a long time, in an atmosphere of calm, fortify them, and in this way they are, although indirectly, preparing themselves for the unpleasant eventualities of their future social life. In the same way, the child who is nourished during the first year of his life on milk alone is thus preparing to be able to eat different kinds of food later on. If infants’ nourishment has been such as to permit a healthy and robust physical development, then the grown man will be strong enough to digest heavy food, but not if he has been fed on heavy and unsuitable food as a child.

He who has acquired perfect equilibrium of his body can bend to the right and to the left, and take difficult steps withouf falling. The acquisition of equilibrium, therefore, is a necessary preparation for difficult movements. The same is true with regard to the psychic life. The child who does spontaneous exercises which lead to a healthy mental equilibrium will be able to adapt himself without losing his own individuality. Is it through illness and disease that we prepare ourselves to be strong? Did heroes prepare themselves gradually for acts of heroism from childhood on? NO - their life is one great incognito as regards the future. That which must be prepared through the present is strength, equilibrium and health. Those children who have gained inner strength in their work, and by exercising themselves, as men will be better able than we to adapt themselves to an effort which they do not find pleasant.

????????If the children in a Montessori school work individually rather than collectively, how will they be able to prepare themselves for social life?

Social life does not consist of a group of individuals remaining close together, side by side, nor in their advancing en masse under the command of a captain like a regiment on the march, nor like an ordinary class of school children.

The social life of man is founded upon work, harmoniously organized and upon social virtures - and these are the attitudes which develop to an exceptional degree amongst our children. Constancy in their work, patience when having to wait, the power of adapting themselves to the innumerable circumstances which present themselves in their daily contact with each other, reciprocal helpfulness and so on, are all exercises which represent a real and practical social life and which we see, for the first time, being organized amongst the children in a school. In fact, whereas schools used to be equipped only so as to accomodate children, seated passively side by side, who were expected to receive from the teacher (we might almost say in a parasytic manner), our schools, on the contrary, have an equipment which is adapted to all those forms of work which are necessary in an active and independent little community.

The individual work in which the child is able to isolate himself and to concentrate, serves to perfect his individuality and the nearer man gets to perfection, the better is he able to associate harmoniously with others. A strong social movement cannot exist without prepared individuals, just as the members of an orchestra cannot play together harmoniously unless each individual has been thoroughly trained by repeated exercise when alone.

Children do not seem to be interested in just tracing the touch boards repeatedly when presented. They do it just once or twice and then stop. What shall we do?

The tactile material should be presented at the earliest opportunity after the child is admitted to the House of Children. We have to take advantage of the sensitive period for touch which may disappear soon. When presented during that period the children will do it with avid interest.

1. Never touch a child unless invited by him (in some form or another).
2. Never speak ill of a child, either in his presence or in his absence
3. Concentrate on strengthening and helping the development of what is good in a child so that its presence may leave less and less space for the bad.
4. Be active in preparing the environment:take meticulous and constant care of it help the children to establish constructive relationships with it. Show the children where everything belongs and demonstrate the use of the materials
5. Be ever ready to answer the call of a child who needs your assistance. Listen and respond to his appeals.
6. Respect children when they make mistakes. As soon as they can, allow them to discover their error and correct it by themselves. Stop firmly any misuse of the environment and any action which endangers a child, his development, or others.
7. Respect the child who takes rest or watches others or ponders over what he himselfhas done or will do. Neither call him nor force him to other forms of activity.
8. Help those who are in search of activity and cannot find it.
9. Be untiring in repeating presentations to the child who has refused them earlier; in helping the child acquire what is not yet his own and overcome imperfections. Do this by animating the environment with care and purposive restraint and silence, with mild words and loving presence. Make your ready presence felt to the child who searches and hide from the child who has found.
10. Ever treat the child with the best of good manners and offer him the best you have yourself and at your disposal.

How is History introduced in the Children’s House?

If children have been welcomed into a rich environment, in the first three years of life they will lay a solid foundation of complicity and solidarity with their world and all its exhilarating phenomena among which, first, foremost and above all, their own kind. The people around them are an inexhaustible source of interest. Initially those present and tangible, and as their sense of time, their capacity for abstraction and their imagination develop, also the doings, the comings and goings, the ventures and adventures of people past will fascinate them.

‘Indeed it is a love of his environment that we may envisage the irresistible urge which, throughout the sensitive periods, unites the child to things. It is not love in the sense that is commonly understood as an emotional feeling but a love of the intelligence which sees and assimilates and builds itself through loving’ - Maria Montessori, The Secret of Childhood.

Anything offered to the children in the Casa Dei Bambini must take into account the children’s passionate and vital interest in their environment.

History is introduced simply in the form of illustrated legends of human life through the ages rather than presented as a subject. It is interwoven into the fabric of the environment.

History is present in stories, by others, and our own. All true stories are history. Even an account of an event that occurred as short a time as half an hour before is an embryonic bit of history: “This morning when I was coming to school…’, ‘When I was a little girl …’, ‘When my father was a little boy …’, ‘Long, long ago when my grandfather was a young man…’ Family tales reach into the past and they are history.

History is present in music, the language of the spirit of place and time. Without music history is mute and dry.

History is present in art and artefact. Environments should have sets of choice and beautiful art cards, books on art and architecture, reproductions of great paintings on the walls - few and far between, given the place and space that they deserve. Objects used in the environment can and should have historical value.

When books are read, the name of the authors, their country of origin (for history and geography are inseparable), and when they lived should be mentioned. When music is played, again, the name, country and times of the composer are to be given.

As a knowledgeable Montessorian once said, the child in the Casa dei Bambini is fundamentally interested in fact, language, and sensorial exploration. Not to be forgotten is the child’s affective response to fact, language, and sensorial exploration. If a child has touched and been delighted by silken fabrics in the fabric boxes, it will look upon silk stocking of Ingres’ Napolean with delight.

As human beings, we love the history of our kind, and that of other species; the history of our earth, and that of our universe. Children’s pristine humanity is most avidly receptive and will thrive on the story of mankind if it is gently told, with absolute conviction.

If the children in a Montessori school work individually rather than collectively, how will they be able to prepare themselves for social life?

Social life does not consist of a group of individuals remaining close together, side by side, nor in their advancing en masse under the command of a captain like a regiment on the march, nor like an ordinary class of school children.

The social life of man is founded upon work, harmoniously organized and upon social virtues - and these are the attitudes which develop to an exception degree amongst our children. Constancy in their work, patience when having to wait, the power of adapting themselves to the innumerable circumstances which present themselves in their daily contact with each other, reciprocal helpfulness and so on, are all exercises which represent a real and practical social life and which we see, for the first time, being organized amongst the children in a school. In fact, whereas schools used to be equipped only so as to accomodate children, seated passively side by side, who were expected to receive from the teacher (we might almost say in a parasitic manner), our schools, on the contrary, have an equipment which is adapted to all those forms of work which are necessary in an active and independent little community.

The individual work in which the child is able to isolate himself and to concentrate, serves to perfect his individuality and the nearer man gets to perfection, the better is he able to associate harmoniously with others. A strong social movement cannot exist without prepared individuals, just as the members of an orchestra cannot play together harmoniously unless each individual has been thoroughly trained by repeated exercise when alone.

Some numbers are odd and some are even. Is it very necessary for the child who is starting on arithmetic to know about these? (A question asked by a working Montessorian during a refresher course.)

The child needs to know how to count and also learn about the decimal system of numeration. The decimal system of numeration is based on numbers one to ten. Therefore the child must be introduced to them. Once the child is familiar with the knowledge and application of the laws of the decimal system he needs to be introduced to the four arithmetical operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) — their nature and their ‘tables’. This being the foundation to be laid it is not necessary to introduce the nature of ‘even’ and ‘odd’ to the child. These terms can be introduced to children after they have laid their basis for number work. They need not be burdened with them when they start around three-and-a-half years of age.