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Geography in the Montessori Classroom |
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Geography in the Montessori Classroom |
Geography in the Montessori Classroom
On a cold evening last January, many parents braved the chilly weather to attend a special parent education presentation on the topic of geography in the Montessori classroom. Those who came were well rewarded with a fascinating overview of how and why geography is such an integral part of Montessori education.
Children's House | Elementary I | Elementary II | Junior High
by Millie Dosh Children ask the world of us.
A newly conceived child lives in the matrix of the womb, where she is enclosed, nourished, safe, and warm. She begins her orientation to the universe here.
When sufficiently developed, she leaves this familiar world and moves to the second matrix, the mother. She begins an internal organization of every sensation, sight, sound, touch, taste, smell and texture with a reliable point of interest—the mother.
The matrix of the mother quickly expands to include the rest of the family. Others are drawn in, to enlarge the baby’s social circle. The world of nature becomes a vital part of this expansion. Animals, birds, bugs, flowers—all evoke in the baby a sense of wonder at being alive in the world within the safety of his family. He can reach this world with his own skills of touching, rolling, creeping, crawling and walking. He checks back to his primary relationships, as needed, in order to continue his exploration of a bigger world. The earth is his third matrix.
By the time of their arrival in Children’s House, our young children are ready for a story that gives them words for the new awareness of their world.
Geography at the Children's House Level by Sarah Endsley
Dr. Montessori spoke of “giving the world to the child in this first plane of development.” The prepared environment, trusting adults, and the freedom to explore, give the child the world.
CH geography comes from the children’s understanding their world and their place in it. It comes through imaginative storytelling, accurate and descriptive language, sensorially rich experiences and beautifully made materials that allow for exploration and classifying experiences. The sphere handled by the three-year-old one discovers later to be the same shape as the globe of oceans and continents. Land and water forms can be filled with water to create a lake, an island. a peninsula, an isthmus, a strait. A ball of clay is rolled into a sphere, cut in half, and flattened into two circles that become hemispheres. Each continent on the puzzle maps is made up of parts that can be manipulated and put back together again, building a memory in the hands long before the memory in the words.
Children may choose a continent folder with pictures of people, places, food, clothing, children, work, housing, transportation, plants and animals. Conversations explode into questions and wonderment about the world with its similarities and differences. Children share family experiences, where grandma lives, where we have traveled or what is in the news.
Children realize that the flag they have been so carefully walking around the line with, represents the country of Azerbaijan, which they have no problem pronouncing, and as a matter of fact, the more difficult the name, the more fascinating to them. Exploring their world is exciting to them.
Animals of North America may be drawn and labeled in a report, a story, or a decorative border around a labeled map. And as children learn to read, these materials are explored again through labeling and reading descriptions or definitions of these same geography materials.
As a child, my generation wondered about the world… your children are going to be of the world… experiencing similarities and differences, wonder and appreciation, respect and hopefully working together.
Geography in Elementary I by April Zoll Close Ursula Thrush, writing in Montessori Newsletter, stated: “Geography serves as a unifying force that unites all the sciences as they deal with the life of humans on earth. (It) deals with the earth; its chemistry, history, and anthropology.”
From the beginning of the school year when the first story, The Creation of the Earth, is told, geography is a constant focus of interest at the Elementary I level. Geography is divided into six divisions that students may work on at any point during the year. The Creation of the Earth; The Nature of the Elements—in which the three states of matter, ways that particles combine, and the perennial favorites–attraction and gravity–are examined; The Sun and Earth—how their relationship creates the way we experience life; specifically time, seasons, and weather; Work of Air examining the laws of air, the types and effects of wind; Work of Water— wherein we examine the laws water follows in any of its three forms, and the effects of water including erosion and the role of water in the spread of vegetation.
The final chapter is entitled Human Society and highlights the way people rely upon each other, and on the earth, for survival.
Montessorians take the etymology of geography as the story of the earth quite broadly. We present lessons with a variety of charts, demonstrations, and stories that we hope will lead the children to see that everything works together to create this vibrant mass of life we find on Earth. And by everything, we mean exactly that. Everything—from the tiniest particles of matter, to the coral in the ocean, to the wind and the rocks, to all the people who have ever been—all that exists will follow the laws that are particular to it in the universe, and in doing so will work for the good of the whole. The subtext is that in meeting one’s own needs the greater good can be served.
In our Montessori classrooms, students of all ages learn about the neighborhood through experience. Small groups of interested children may go out to the hardware store to buy supplies for a project, or may they go out to interview someone. For example, a pair of students in my class organized a going-out last month to interview the owner of a local rock shop in order to get more information about granite. The interview supplemented the information they’d gathered from books and other materials in the classroom, and they also became acquainted with someone who knows and cares about granite. How great is that?
At the Elementary level, we encourage children to work in small groups on projects of their own devising. We don’t limit children by asking them to complete a list of pre-defined projects because we embrace the characteristics of the Elementary child—the child of the Second Plane of Development. Two characteristics especially relevant to this brief overview are the newly emerging power of imagination and the possibilities that present themselves as a child transitions from having an absorbent mind to being in control of a reasoning mind. In our lessons, we give children the keys to the universe by giving them enough details to whet their interest and build a foundation for them, but we leave enough out so that after the lesson children can use their imaginations and reasoning minds to figure things out for themselves.
One benefit of the three-year cycle, and of the spiraling curriculum that is a part of a child’s six years as an Elementary student, is that a child may get a lesson more than once. Not only is each presentation of a lesson lesson a little (or a lot) different each time it is given, but a child will come to a lesson with increased knowledge and experience on each subsequent occasion. In addition, a child will often hear different details each time a lesson is presented. Further, even if a child isn’t formally present at a lesson, when a few children receive a lesson and are excited about their work, the whole class learns along with them and benefits from their enthusiasm.
Geography is authentically a part of everything we do. Since Geography is easily integrated into other subject areas such as arithmetic, history, geometry, biology, art, music, and French, the children experience Geography as a vast range of fun and interesting lessons. In our Montessori classrooms, Geography is alive!
Geography in Elementary II by Mindy Holte Each strand in the complex web we call “Cosmic Education” may be thought of as the response to a profoundly felt question uttered in the spirit of each child. The first questions are the broadest and the most universal: Who am I? From what do I come? What am I supposed to do with my life?
These are the questions each elementary child is asking, and the lessons of Geography provide answers and provoke new questions.
Children in the 6-9 classroom are exposed to lessons and stories that open up vast realms of possibility. In the upper elementary the students continue to pursue these questions with deep interest. Their exploration becomes deeper and more intense. They continue to be inspired and intrigued by the wonder and mystery of the universe, and they possess the skills to develop their interest more fully.
For Montessorians “Geography” is all studies connected with the earth and the sciences needed to understand its formation. Children of this age love the extreme and extraordinary. Did you know there are tens of thousands of earthquakes every year? Where is the highest mountain on earth? How deep is the deepest ocean? These and other intriguing aspects of our world make geography a popular topic.
In the elementary we continue to work with political and physical geography. The children need to know where we are on the earth and who are our neighbors. Use of nomenclature helps the students interpret and organize their thinking about different landforms.
We also explore the history of the earth and its formation. We investigate the forces that continue to shape our earth. Lessons on the physical properties of matter support lessons in how the matter that is our earth’s crust, mantle or core interact. Physics and chemistry lessons help the children understand the elements and forces that make up our planet.
In addition we explore the Earth’s place in the solar system. The sun is the driving force for seasons and weather. As we look at the relationship between sun and earth we give students the tools they need to understand these daily phenomena.
Economic geography is also a key component for the upper elementary. Children learn about the relationships between resources and economy, and they explore the interrelationships between various members of society. Going out experiences further enhance this understanding of the complexities of their own civilization and its economic foundations.
As students ourselves, most of us approached these topics of earth science, chemistry, map-reading, rivers of the world, states of matter, and so on as disparate topics to be “covered.” In the elementary classroom these topics are not covered; they are discovered. As the children explore the world we live on through the lessons of geography they discover the diverse places their fellow humans call home. They learn about the forces that shape their world. Most importantly they engage in a fundamental dialogue with our precious earth: What are you? Where do I belong? How can I contribute? In exploring and answering these questions children are engaging with full mind and spirit in the construction of themselves and the development of their full potential as human beings.
Geography and the Global Community by Kris Schaefer Where do we go from giving the universe to the elementary child? Can it get any bigger than that? Well, to the adolescent Montessori asks us to give the whole history of humanity. Wow! That’s a daunting task, but I’m not here to talk about history, rather geography. If we look at adolescents, they turn inward to focus on who they are in the context of the group and what their part is in the human story. As we explore this human story we weave in geography. We use timelines, maps, trips, stories, lessons (where students actually take notes), and primary sources. We challenge students to discuss what they are learning and to see how it fits into the world around them. It all starts with this idea of community.
The small child first sees her community in her family, then her world expands into her school, her neighborhood, then to her city, state and country. In each place the child is a citizen of her community. Then we introduce the child to being a member of a global community; geography links us with this final community–that of humanity. It is through this process of recognizing and understanding their role in an expanding community that children can become agents of peace. This is one way that Montessori connects geography and peace. Our job, as teachers and parents, is to help them to find their role in their communities. The study of Geography can promote an understanding and acceptance of cultures around the world, it can encourage empathy and the idea of caring for the earth or stewardship.
So, how do we teach geography in the Junior High? We do study different continents: one year we study Asia and Europe, another year North and South America as well as Minnesota, and in our third year, we study Africa. We have students create their own maps as resources. We even ask them to memorize countries and capitals—not so they will always remember that Ouagadougou is the capital of Burkina Faso, but so that they have a context and they know the names of countries as we discuss larger issues connecting geography to the human story.
But, to truly learn about geography, Larry Schaefer suggests that Junior High students must study geography through their feet. So, each year, we study the United States through the trips that we take. By land we travel to Cortez, Colorado, to study Archaeology, then to Williamsburg, Virginia, to study Colonial America, and lastly to Biloxi, Mississippi, to study civil rights and Marine biology. Each trip the students are given a map where they follow our journey and make daily observations about the surroundings. We climb mountains, visit historic and civil rights sites, fish and explore the Gulf of Mexico, and become archaeologists. We end the school year putting our feet on bicycles to explore the geography of Minnesota and Wisconsin on our 5-day bike trip. We also use our feet to explore the cities we live in, during a week in the spring that we call “Town and Country Days.” Throughout the year students explore our rural campus in residency experiences of six weeks at a time. We have participated in foreign exchanges with schools in Russia, Sweden, France and now Mexico. It is these real experiences that connect students to what they have learned from the time they were in Children’s House.
Montessori introduces geography to the young child by showing that children all over the world have the same basic needs as they do. A child from rural Indonesia has the same needs and tendencies and as a child from Great Britain or the United States. There are cultural differences, but the essence of the child is the same all over the world. At the Junior High level, it is important to go beyond this to discuss also what makes us different—to acknowledge that with difference comes prejudice even discrimination. So geography ties into a study of cultures—from dominant cultures (the haves) to the have nots. We discuss ideas like affirmative action—how is it still necessary today, or is it? We discuss civil rights and human rights—are there universal human rights, if so, what are they and are they important? Through the history of human rights, we weave in the study of peace. We encourage respectful disagreement, and do not shy away from discussing difficult topics. At times we have heated discussion using opposing viewpoints, and students may have to argue a position in which they may not agree. All the while, we are encouraging the development of the character of the child—to encourage each student to find his or her own voice. And believe me, there’s a lot of talking that goes on in the Junior High.
We have heard from local high school teachers that our students are unique. They stand out as people and how they are as students. It is their engagement in class, their willingness to ask questions, to challenge (respectfully of course) and to take risks that makes them stand out within their communities. It is as if, from Lake Country, they take a satchel of tools to use in high school and beyond—tools that will help them in life, not to spew facts or impress people with knowledge, but tools that will encourage them to be active, caring members of the communities in which they are a part.
In a sense, it is making geography real, giving it purpose that excites the adolescent and encourages them to reach outward. As we weave geography into the Children’s House, elementary and Junior High, we give our students language and tools to be members of a complex community and to be agents of peace within that community. We start simply, with the idea of being a member of a group—where there is real work, real disagreement and real responsibility. This work is hard—yet is an important lesson for children because it is a glimpse of the work and challenges required to be contributing members of our global community.
The above are transcripts of presentations given at the January 10, 2008 parent evening and were excerpted in the Spring 2008 issue of the Lake Country School CourierLCS Home Page > Parent Resources > Articles > Geography in the Montessori Classroom