Montessori Moments is a collection of videos dedicated to sharing special moments in the Montessori baby and toddler classrooms. These 13 episodes were all filmed at Montessori Mother ELC in Berlin, Germany in 2019.
2.5 year old girl uses saw to SAFELY and successfully cut wood! The woodworking table is one of the most special part of our Montessori Toddler Classroom and is loved by all the children. Toddlers are fascinated by the use of tools in purposeful work. Given a safe place to learn, they will always surprise us with their limitless potential.
Babies 6-12 months old sit together at the Montessori Weaning Table and share food.
The Baby Snack time is a beautiful moment when babies can sit and eat together, growing their independence, social awareness, and cultural connectedness.
Montessori Imbucare boxes are ideal learning maerials that train eye-hand coordination, object permanence, and fine motor skills. Babies repeat the activity many times until they feel completely satisfied.
Expressing artistic creativity starts as soon as a child can hold a brush! In the Montessori Toddler Classroom, children explore many forms of art, including painting at the easel!
Practical life is the cornerstone of the Montessori Method. In the Montessori Toddler Class, children enjoy taking care of their environment and build self-esteem as they discover new possibilities. This toddler (2.5 years old) is having fun spraying the windows with water and wiping them with a squeegee!
Toddlers from 18-27 months old enjoy watering plants and blowing bubbles together in the garden of Germany’s first Montessori Early Learning Center!
The group snack time is a beautiful moment when toddlers can enjoy sitting and eating together, growing their independence, social awareness, and cultural connectedness. In every Montessori Toddler Class, children from 16months to 4 years old sit together at a low table and share food. They also get to have the experience of setting the table for each other and tidying up afterwards.
This is one of the many practical life activities which evoke joy and concentration in toddlers. It offers a few simple steps and an immediate cause and effect. I present this activity as early as 1.5 years when the child shows interest. They get to choose the sculpture(s) they would like to polish and bring them to the table. In the polishing box there is a wooden bowl, a hand-sewn cloth mitt, a sponge applicator, and a bottle of polish (baby oil). The baby oil gives an immediate shine to the sculpture which dries within an hour to be ready for the next toddler. We also keep extras in the little drawer on top of which the wooden sculptures stand.
The toddlers love playing with water, but it’s even better when they can do something purposeful with it. Their favourite part of dishwashing is transferring the water from basin to basin and then pouring it into the bucket. Montessori wash stations are also beautiful because they require the child to remember their activity as they carry water between rooms.
Toddlers have NO limit to the number of languages they can learn at a time. In Montessori we practice “one face-one language” and children associate each language to the person who speaks it to them. In this video I give a presentation of kitchen utensil vocabulary objects and exactly matching photos.
The Montessori Ball Tracker is a very special material. For babies it gives a preparation for crawling as following the movement of the ball integrates the right and left hemispheres of the brain. For standing toddlers it helps them to train their balance as they stand up and down. The object permanence box at the bottom of the Nienhuis model provides an additional point of interest. Needless to say, this is one of the most treasured materials in both the baby and toddler classrooms.
The toddler wardrobe is something that can be used at home to support collaboration during dressing. Keeping just a couple of options available at the child’s level encourages independence by giving them the choice of what to wear, but also lets the adult make sure that any of the options available are appropriate for the weather that day. For example, you might put 2 different colours of jackets on little hangers when it’s chilly outside.
In Montessori toddlers have the option to prepare food for themselves when they are hungry, eat a child-sized table with their friends, and clean up afterwards. This is something so simple that adults do every day, and toddlers are so eager to do the same. The children do no HAVE to prepare food and clean up, but the activities are there for them to take up when they are interested. When given the choice between toys and practical life, 2-3 year olds will chose practical life almost every time. This toddler peeled a pear for the group snack time.