Montessori-ish ici

Welcome 2012, I am glad you are finally here!

Happy New Year to all of you, certainly a little late, but completely heartfelt.

The new year season is always a time of reflecting for us.  While it might be a little cliché to do this at that particular period of time, we have come to realize, over the years, that this reflections about our values, our goals are visions of us as a family and as individuals, are necessary to keep on going strong.  And we have yet to find another period of time during the year to do it.

This year, a particular event really tainted our discussion, and most of all our visions of our family, which is this:

Tooth bag, pattern found at Sew mama sew.  It was made by both X and I.

looks quite benign right?

But I can tell you it slapped me right in the face when X came to tell me that he had lost not 1 but 2 (!!) teeth while playing outside.  Quite a way to finish 2011!

As I mentionned in this post, both in Waldorf and Montessori worlds, the lost of tooth is seen as a passage, as a transition to a new phase of life.   -  Well, I guess we are already 2 feet in, without completely having realized it.


We are clearly getting further and further away from the 3-6 age period defined by Dr. Montessori.  This period is the best one defined by her, and I have felt over time that is rather easy to go through it with the ginormous amount of information about it all over the web.

Indeed, I remember how the first phases of life was easy while navigating through the Montessori philosophy.  This post seriously reminded me how I miss those time.  I felt like I was much more in tune with my children, and that I could anticipate their needs and their developmental phases a lot more easily.  I felt I was just one step ahead of them, seeing the right moment emerge.  I have to admit that having 3 children also really does make it more challenging to fully live the Montessori philosophy at home as afterschoolers. The needs of my 1 yo are so much different then the ones of my 6 yo, and meeting them all really requires imagination, time and organization. Challenging, but thrilling nonetheless.

For the last months, I have thus lost this feeling of simpleness and easiness in our daily lives. And since we are not homeschooling, and not using the Montessori method, the inspiration and the resources out there are lacking to help me keep on going.  I have read a lot of Maria Montessori's own writing for this new phase that we are facing with X. But she didn't define this period as much as the previous one, and I feel that to keep on going within this philosophy, without using the method that is, I will have extrapolate from her words.


 With this lack of inspiration, and information, I have no idea how "Montessori" we will keep on being. Yes, I still do have 2 children that are in the easy stages of Montessori, but I feel that our new ways, this shift we are taking,   is also tainting the way I do with E and M.   Forget the trays and the list of prepared activities, it doesn't seem to be working for us anymore. My youngests are looking up to X and are much eager to imitate what he does.
And so for all those reasons, I have contemplated the idea of closing this blog.   After all, this is a Montessori blog.  But after much deliberation, I decided to give it another go, and let my inspiration and extrapolation lead the way.  We'll see where that will lead us.  And I hope you'll stay along with me.

I'll take this opportunity to ask a question: what would you like me to talk about?  Is there a topic you'd like to hear about, or something you would like to see about how we go on in our lives?  Please, let me know, I'd be delighted to hear your ideas!

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I'll be undertaking my annual blog face lifting in the next few days. (yes, I guess I am a little bit of a creature of change.  I need fresh air, fresh look and novelty once in a while...)  The blog might look wonky for a while, excuse me while I try to make it all new and good.