- Maria Montessori
We call them “Montessori moments” – those moments that are so golden and precious that they are indelibly etched into our hearts forever. I’d like to take full credit for what happened in my Montessori classroom yesterday, but like most Montessori moments, it just ‘happened’ without a lot of planning or foresight.
I had been planning all week on teaching the children how to write a “friendly” letter. It being the week before Christmas, I sat in the circle with my 30 Lower Elementary students and we composed a letter to Mrs. Claus together. The responses were pretty typical: How’s Santa and Rudolf? You make great cookies. You’re very nice. What do you want for Christmas?
We spoke briefly about form: Salutations, the body of the letter, and the closing. We spoke of indenting paragraphs, capitalization, punctuation, and margins. Then came the assignment. They were to write a letter to Santa, but not your typical “I want…” letter. It was to be an unselfish letter to Santa. They were to write what they wanted Santa to bring to others.
