Montessori chickens!

The upper elementary kids have four chickens on campus that we've been visiting pretty much daily.

They are let out of the coop in the afternoons, and since Hannah is out at noon on Fridays, we've started a new Friday ritual in which we picnic with the chickens. Of course, this involves far more chicken chasing than picnicking. At first I worried about keeping the kids' fingers away from the bird beaks, but then one nibbled my toe, and since it just felt like a little pinch, I figured no big deal. Jacob has been nibbled a few times at this point, and he acknowledges the nibble with a "what the heck" face that fades pretty quickly.(I caught a nibble on video. Fair warning: it's another terribly shot vertical video.)

After watching a few of the big kids pick up the birds, Hannah wanted to give it a go. She picked one and followed it around for a long time, waiting for that perfect moment when she was close enough and brave enough to pick it up. After that she was a natural and just walked around picking them up at leisure.

There is also a new family of adorable foxes living on the other side of the fence. Yes, convenient location for them. Potentially inconvenient for the chickens....

 

I love Hannah's school. We end up hanging out for an extra hour or more after I pick her up every day because the campus is so beautiful, and this amazing weather makes it hard to come home to this yard-less city row home. We want to be outside as much as possible right now, and since Jacob hates getting in his car seat and often requires an arm bar to get buckled, I try to avoid getting in and out of the car multiple trips. Anyway, he spends enough time in the car just taking Hannah to and from school, so there's no reason to add a destination to the trip. Fortunately, Hannah can't get enough of her school; even after being there all day, I still end up pulling her away kicking and screaming when it's time to come home and make dinner. I seriously love that she spends so much of her time in such an awesome environment and that she gets a daily respite from the concrete jungle.

Morning share at Montessori

Hannah kept me busy with classwork during morning share last week. First she showed me this counting exercise in which she lines up the beaded wires sequentially with one on top and ten on the bottom and then finds the numeral that matches the quantity. Number recognition!

Then I asked her to show me the movable alphabet because she'd been talking about it A LOT. The movable alphabet is a huge box of wooden lowercase letters. The consonants are pink, and the vowels are blue. After removing the lid, Hannah grabbed a basket of objects and began laying them out: hat, map, bird, box, ox, etc. Then she grabbed the rat and proceeded to sound it out. "Rrrrrr," she said, and grabbed the "r". Then "aa aa aa," and grabbed the "a". Finally, "t t t," and grabbed the "t." Rat!! This kid is so obviously from Baltimore City!

Eager to show me everything, she put away the rat and the movable alphabet and the box of objects and took me over the sensory section. She picked up a bowl with some soap, a sponge, and a scrub brush in it and handed me a rock to carry back to the mat. After donning a rainbow striped apron, she filled the bowl with water from the sink, added a few pumps of soap, and showed me how she cleans the rock with the scrub brush....

...and how she wipes off the soap with a sponge.

As tends to happen, what started with a simple rock cleaning soon turned into a full blown classroom deep clean. She attempted to clean the chairs and tables, but they were full due to parental visitors, so  she tackled the window instead. Hannah showed me how to use the squeegee to catch the drips of water before they trickled down too far and then let me try it for myself.

That was the end of the cleaning spree. On to braiding!

As her teacher was making the rounds to each parent, quietly giving the 5-minute warning, Hannah pulled a tulip stitching out of the sewing box and showed me how she sews, threading the purple yarn in and out and over to of the tulip outline. I admired her patience and then hugged her tight and left her to finish her flower.

I love being able to share in her school day, even if only for an hour, and I'm also especially grateful that Mary Cate was able to watch Jacob so I could actually focus on Hannah and really let that hour be hers alone. The two of us don't get a lot of time like that since since baby brother came along. Seeing how eager she was to share her daily activities with me makes me even more certain that she is in the best possible educational setting for her, and since it isn't free, that's a nice certainty to have.

Hmm...face painting, soccer, and an apothecary photo shoot

Oooo boy am I behind!! I'm living in the weeds these days so the best I can do at the moment is post a few unrelated pictures.






Hannah got a pretty interesting face painting at this year's HampdenFest. I'm not sure what it is--vampire butterfly?? It goes well with the blue flower barrette that one of the vendors gave her for free.

It sucks to have no backyard, but you can't beat our back porch! Best back porch around! And come March/April, there will be another baby hanging out on that back porch...Yay!

Hannah's awesome school started a complimentary after-school soccer program this year. Love complimentary!! It's especially awesome at this age when kids have no idea what they will and will not like, and you end up forking out dough for them to try something and then having to deal with them complaining about going which is what Hannah does every Saturday morning when it's time for dance class. All summer she asked to dance and said she missed her dance friends. We switched her to Peabody this year (and so did the friend she kept asking for), but she is not liking it...I'm hoping it's just because it's new and that she'll adjust and like it, but if not, we won't sign her up again in the spring. In the meantime, I've explained that she has to follow through with it.

We stopped by Jenny's apothecary a few weeks ago to pick up some post-partum tea for Terrill (yay for new babies!) and Hannah managed to spot the random hats Jenny had laying around, including this pink cowboy hat with glitter.

September ended with our annual visit to the Maryland Renaissance Festival...post pending...and we rang in October with a camping trip--Jacob's maiden voyage--another post pending!

Mother's Day the Montessori Way

The Mother's Day tea that Hannah's class hosted last Friday was hands down my favorite Montessori event yet, and not just because I'm on the receiving end of the shebang. Well, maybe that had a little something to do with it...

The primary age classes at Hannah's school each host a mother's day tea every other year (they celebrate dad on the years in between). The mamas showed up a little after 10:00 and mingled until the kids filed in at 10:15. Hannah's face split into the biggest, cheesiest grin after catching my eye, and she cheesed at me through most of the singing as well. At one point she mouthed, "I like your necklace" and smiled even bigger (I was wearing a beaded necklace she had made me).

They sang a lot of cute songs, some I'd never heard before (like one about a kid who wants to pick papayas but mama says no because it's a work day) and some that were familiar (like You Are My Sunshine).

Then their teacher asked all the girls to find their partner. Hannah looked confused for a minute and then her partner called her name, and she walked over to stand in front of him.

They did the cutest dance! I wish I had video of her first partner dance, but I don't, just a couple of mediocre pictures.

After the dance, the girls moved out of the center of the circle and stood beside their partners, all except Hannah who lingered in front of Jack until he said her name again and pointed to the space on his right. It's a good thing she was partnered with a 5-year-old who could keep her in check! She's a bit spacey like her mama.

While waiting for them to file in I snapped a quick scenery shot. Some wonderful mamas arrived early and set up all the tables with fancy tablecloths, a fancy platter of delicious munchies, and a fancy tea pot. We each brought our own tea cups and saucers, a feat which proved more daunting than it sounds. All we have in our cupboards are giant tea mugs, and I came up empty-handed at the one thrift store I managed to make it to. My mom saved me from further headache by heading to the outlets on her lunch break and then priority mailing her findings. Thank you mama!

Hannah and I shared a table with a little girl who is allergic to nuts and can therefore only eat what her mom brings her; this means that Hannah and I had our pick of the foods on the platter and ate way more of it than we should have....yum!

Hannah's friend Ryder sat at the table next to us, and his mama snapped and shared the next two pics.

Photo courtesy of Ryder's mama

Photo courtesy of Ryder's mama

The classroom turned to chaos within about half an hour as sugar began pumping through all the children. Playground time!

Selfishly, I'm glad that this year was the mother's day tea because since they are in this class for 3 years, it means I'll get another Montessori Mother's Day tea before she heads to an elementary classroom. Wonder what they'll do for dad's day next year...

A Montessori Thanksgiving

Hannah's classroom had a Thanksgiving feast on Tuesday morning, and I was one of the parents who volunteered to help set up and tear down the feast, which means I got to snap a couple of pics with my phone. I didn't want to be too obtrusive or annoying so when I say a couple, I mean literally, two. One of the other moms took a lot and said she'd share her shots so if that happens, I'll come back and edit this later. (She's one of the class moms, and as such, I think it's probably more acceptable for her to take a lot of photos. As a newbie, I'm still trying to lay low.)

Here's a shot of Hannah in her little pilgrim girl bonnet chowing down. (I tried to crop out the faces of the other children in the class in case their parents aren't as comfortable as I am having their child splashed across the internet.)

This is what Hannah's place at the table looked like. They dined on turkey, sweet potato fries, pumpkin bread, popcorn, cranberry whip, and also some cornbread and butter that they had made the day before in class. While they ate, the parents continuously refilled favorite foods, allowing them to gorge on as much as they want. Hannah asked for more turkey, popcorn, cornbread, and apple cider. I had a few kids who must have eaten like five servings of popcorn--I've never seen kids get so excited about popcorn!  If it were me, I'd have been going back for the pumpkin bread.

After eating their fill, they ran it off on the playground while the parent volunteers cleaned up, and then we all headed home to start our long holiday break, with one feast already under our belts.

I loved being there to meet some of the other children in the class and having the opportunity to watch Hannah interact with her classmates. On this day of gratitude, I am grateful to be able to be both a stay-at-home mom and a working mom. I know I say that a lot, but seriously, being able to work whatever hours I want and work them from home is a huge luxury. 

And of course, I'm grateful that I get to be Hannah's mom and take part in her life. Lucky me!

(Photos and stories from our family feast today forthcoming.)

Hannah's first field trip

I chaperoned Hannah's first class field trip on Monday. We rode the school bus (Hannah's first bus ride!) to Rodgers' Farm which is just a few miles west of the school. Hannah and I visited this farm last year (I can't find that post though or I'd link to it), and although we enjoyed it, we think Weber's is a lot more fun.

We started our tour in front of the giant corn maze where our guide explained in far more detail than was necessary for a group of 3- and 4-year-olds all of the various uses for corn and how many food products it's found in. He held up a box of Trix, which I know Hannah has never seen before, and a bottle of corn syrup explaining that although the kids might not know what it is, it's in all the sweet stuff they eat. The other mom's and I kept exchanging smiling/shocked glances. Parts of his presentation were far too advanced for that age group (even I was bored) and parts just did not apply to a lot of the kids at the school, and certainly not my kid who doesn't even get the multi-grain O's cereal more than every couple months (the boxes go stale in our cupboard).  Everyone had a good sense of humor about it, but it was definitely not tailored to the Montessori lesson plan. Toward the end of the corn presentation, prior to taking the kids in to the first checkpoint of the maze, he asked that the little boys all remember not to run. Someone yelled out "and girls!" and he corrected his comment to include girls. If he'd seen how insanely quickly Hannah ran through the other mazes we've taken her to, he wouldn't have singled out the boys on that one.

We traipsed through a bit of the corn maze and then headed over to the animals. The cow walked right over to the fence to wait for the pumpkin the guide threw over for it snack on. Prior to that, Hannah tried to feed it an ink pen that she'd pulled out of the dirt when we first arrived. I pocketed the pen.

I'm not really sure what was said about the animals; it was absolutely freezing outside, and we were losing interest.

After the animals we walked into the pumpkin patch and the kids all picked a small pumpkin to take home. On our way to the tractor ride, Hannah hopped behind the wooden corn cob and asked me to take a picture.

After the tractor ride it was play time, and this, obviously, was the highlight of the visit. Hannah ran and jumped all over the stacked up hay bales, and then came home and continued jumping off of things, like our bed. Eric cautioned her about jumping from so high up, and she replied "It's okay, I'm a good jumper."

While watching her run around the hay bales, one of the other moms in her classroom said that she was in the classroom the other day helping with a craft and Hannah was cracking her up. This mom has a young baby, and Hannah clung to that information and talked a lot about it and also about the baby in my belly. At one point, she even told the mom "You can just sit here and relax, and I'll take care of the kids." I think I got that quote right; if not, I'm close. Anyway, the mom said she had to stifle her laughter and was thinking to herself, "aren't you the youngest kid in the class?" Hannah is not actually the youngest--there is one other girl who is 4 days younger than her--but she's close. That sounds like Hannah though. She's incredibly caring and articulate, and also a bit bossy. She gets that from her mama.

Anyway, I'm really grateful to have a flexible job that enables me to take off on a Monday morning to chaperone field trips with Hannah and her class, and I'm looking forward to continue being as  involved as possible in her classroom life.

Fun days at Montessori: Grandfriend's Day and the Halloween party

Friday was Grandfriend's Day at Montessori. My mom drove down the day before and her and I went to see Wicked (awesome!), then she accompanied Hannah to school the next day and shared some photos and stories with me so I could share them here.

Hannah brings home at least one new painting every day, and during the parent/teacher conference, Hannah's teacher let me know that Hannah spends a lot of time at the easel each day. Apparently she has also mastered the art of double-handed painting, as captured by Grammy.

In lieu of this information, I picked up an easel for Hannah at IKEA on Friday afternoon. Since she decided to play in the kids room there for the first time ever and didn't see me pick it up, I decided to make it a Christmas present. That's right, I've started my Christmas shopping. Feeling good about that! I have no clue where we'll put the easel after giving it to her...the house is pretty full already.

The grandfriends spent a little over an hour in the classroom with the kids then they moved to the auditorium. The kids filed in shortly after and sang some songs they had rehearsed. My mom didn't tell me what songs they sang, but the night before when I asked Hannah what she was going to sing, she started singing "You Are My Sunshine." It was very cute. I wish I'd heard the performance!

Hannah is the one waving excitedly in the photo before.

That afternoon we headed to the mall. This is not something I do on my own, but it is a thing I have always done with my mom, though increasingly less frequently since becoming a parent. She wanted to go to IKEA, and she also wanted to get Hannah's picture taken since she had a coupon from when she took Clay and Mason to get their's taken. I'm not a big fan of those in-mall photo studios, in fact, I think they suck. But I wasn't paying so I humored my mom.

Before that we mosied into the Disney store and Hannah went straight for Merida's bow and arrow set. I cannot tell you how proud I was that in a store chock to the brim with princess crap, she picked up the bow and arrow. I happily bought it for her, and then Grammy bought her a Merida doll that she didn't ask for but that she is quite enamored with.

The bow and arrow and the doll sealed the deal on her Halloween costume for the Halloween party at her school the following day. I'd bought her the Merida dress a couple months ago, and since I had to go to Target for cat food that morning, I picked up the wig while there, and voila! A mini Merida (albeit with strange 80s bangs) is born.

Of course there were tons of Merida's there, after all, she is this year's Disney princess, and although I would have loved to have been more creative, I am just thrilled that the princess she loves is the ONLY one who isn't rescued by some prince and living married and happily ever after by movie end. Even Tiana, who is a pretty cool princess with great work ethic, still needs the prince to round her out and teach her how to have fun. Merida learns her lessons on her own, with a little help from her mother, and at the end, she climbs a giant rock and stands on top as if she's standing on top of the world. This is a princess I can get behind.

Our first Montessori Halloween party was a lot of fun. Hannah bounced in the bounce house, played on the playground, decorated a pumpkin, and hung out with her friends.

We volunteered for the clean up shift at the bean bag toss and while I was doing that, Hannah climbed her own rock and looked out across the land triumphantly.

 

I haven't yet decided on whether or not we'll be trick-or-treating in the neighborhood (regardless, of whether or not we collect the candy, we will definitely not be eating it), but either way, we'll definitely get dressed up and walk around to scope out the really cool and original costumes. Due to the insane weather, the Hampden trick-or-treating and costume contest has been pushed back to Saturday, which is great since it means Eric can come with us!  Hannah has a box full of costumes and dress-up material so whether or not she chooses to be Merida again remains to be seen....

P.S. I'm officially caught up on my blog posts. Woot woot!!

Hannah's second day of school!

Montessori phases in the kids slowly so that the newest and youngest kids start last after the veterans have a chance to get their routine in swing. As such, Hannah was the last one in her class to start school this year with a scheduled start day of September 17. She didn't make it until that Wednesday though because on the night of Brandy's wedding (September 15), Hannah woke up at midnight coughing and gasping for breath. We let her sit on the couch for a while thinking that being upright would help with the wheezing, but it didn't. I rubbed a home-made imitation vapo-rub on her chest and back, but that didn't help either. We gave her the homeopathic cough and cold medicine we have, but still nothing changed. Finally we took her to bed with us, plugged in the cool mist thing and attempted to sleep. Every so often the pause after an exhale would last a little longer than seemed okay, and Eric and I would bolt upright and shake her until she started breathing again. On three different occasions I dressed for the emergency room, but each time we decided to wait a little longer.

At 6:30 that Sunday morning we took her in I put my foot down and said it was time to go. It turned out to be a pointless trip though. The doctor said she had an upper respiratory infection and x-rayed her chest to confirm the absence of pneumonia. They gave her some Tylenol and were dismayed when her temperature rose after that, but they let us go home anyway. They did nothing for her breathing and assured us that it was fine, that once the antibiotics kicked in, it would go back to normal.

She slept in our bed again on Sunday night so we could continue to supervise her inhaling, and when there were still no improvements on Monday morning, I took her in to her pediatrician who gave her a nebulizer, steroids, and an inhaler. Her breathing normalized within a few hours. This doctor, when I told her that the ER did not seem at all alarmed, said that Hannah's breathing was so bad that her first thought was to send us back to the ER (a different one with a pediatric ward), but she opted to start with the neb and steroids. If those hadn't kicked in within the few hours that they did, we'd have been back in the ER, but fortunately that's all it took.

Hannah's fever was low on Monday night and gone by Tuesday morning so we took one more lazy day and then started school that Wednesday. With all the hustle to get out of the house much earlier than we're used to, I forgot to get a picture of her, and I couldn't get one when we got back home because she spent the entire car ride home screaming bloody murder about wanting to eat in the car. I didn't bring her a snack because I knew I was going to give her lunch as soon as she got home. Sue me!!

So there's no picture of Hannah on her first day of school, but here she is on the morning of her second day of school. Yes, she's crying again, this time because you can't see her kitty shirt with her jacket on....Sheesh! Who is this diva??? I assured her that she could remove the jacket once at school, but this didn't seem to make her feel better.

In spite of tears on the first few days, she is loving school and even said tonight that she missed her teacher, Ms. Vicky. I love hearing her stories every day (though I have to pull them out of her rather painfully), and Eric and I are already noticing a lot of maturation in her.

It was an exhausting first week of school which I suppose is to be expected when you've got a kid who is both recovering from a severe infection AND doing something huge like starting school. As a result, we had a super cranky kid on our hands most afternoons and evenings. On Friday I took her swimming after school, and that was the icing on the wipe-out cake. She actually passed out in the car on the 10 minute drive home. This kid never passes out in the car! Certainly not on a ride that short.

Then she did something even crazier: she stayed asleep while I carried her from the car to the house. I am not exaggerating when I say that she has NEVER EVER made that transition in her entire life. Even as an infant in the infant seat, the second I would pick up that seat, she would wake up, and if I didn't remove her from the confines of that seat within seconds, she was screaming about it. 

I laid her down on the couch and let her rest for about an hour before I woke her.

We've bumped up bedtime by half an hour, and she's less cranky now, though it's still obvious that school is taking a lot of her. I was a little leery about her going to school 5 days a week at the age of 3, but I think it's good for her. I think she was getting bored with our routine and wasn't being stimulated enough. I'm loving the changes I'm seeing in her and am so happy that we chose Montessori!

Hannah's off to Montessori in the fall!

The exhaustion has quadrupled since Thursday and is making it so that functioning function on any kind of a normal level is downright unbearable. I've also started in with that annoying eating thing that happened the first time around where I get dizzy if I don't keep eat constantly, but most foods are super unappealing to me, thus making it impossible to ingest enough calories to keep from getting dizzy. Fun!

I'm pushing through it tonight anyway and will attempt to finally cross "blog about Montessori" off my to do list. It's the one blog post I keep procrastinating on, probably because I know it's going to be a big one. Maybe it wouldn't be so unwieldy if I'd broken it into little pieces like I meant to, starting back in the spring when Eric and I went to the open house and fell in love and applied on the spot, or maybe starting when I got Hannah's acceptance letter in the mail and sent back the signed contract, or maybe even starting when when I found out that we'd gotten financial aid (yay!!), but all those moments when un-blogged. Then we signed up Hannah for one of the 2-week summer camp sessions with the goal of making her adjustment easier in the fall. The camp meet-and-greet was back in the beginning of June, and since there weren't a ton of parents there, I whippped out my cell phone and went a little mamarazzi in anticipation of this very belated post.

On the day of the meet-and-greet, Hannah walked right into the classroom, headed straight for the shelves, and immediately engaged herself in an activity. For those of you who aren't familiar with Montessori, one of their philosophies is that all activities/toys should be placed on height-appropriate open shelves and in a progressive order so that the child can see the activities (since seeing them makes them interesting as opposed to putting them in bins or boxes where they go ignored) and move down the line from one activity to the next. Hannah picked up a little metal paint pallet first and placed the accompanying rainbow-colored puff balls in the circular spots where the paint goes. Then she moved on to the empty shaker (like the kind you'd find at a pizza joint full of either garlic, red pepper, or Parmesan) and began filling the holes with the accompanying plastic green sword toothpicks which dangled nicely once all were in. A lot of the activities at the toddler age emphasize the pincher grip to ready them for holding a pencil.

On the next book shelf over she found various bowls full of various trinkets, and she got a kick out of mixing them all into one bowl. Ms. Beth showed then showed her how to sort them, an activity she indulged in for a bit but quickly lost interest in.

On the other side of the shelves Hannah found a 5-gallon water jug and a basket of ping-pong balls and got to work filling the jug.

Dot painting ended up being a favorite activity of Hannah's during camp, and she came home with a ton of really great paintings made with these little bingo markers.

Cooking is another of her favorite activities so when she found the fruit and little glasses she began baking a "vegetable pie" using the shelves as an oven. I attempted to cut out this little boy from the photo in case his mama didn't appreciate him being on the internet, but I probably should have just left him in the shot since his half-face is probably worse than just posting an anonymous photo of someone else's child.

Here she is doing some more sorting, this time according to her own set of Hannah principles.

I scoped out this old-school vanity with its super old-school phone before Hannah did and wondered how she'd react to the Victorian phone and if she'd have any idea what it was.

She did. I guess its intuitive or some sort of cosmic knowledge available to all people. She didn't play with it much though preferring instead to look at herself in the mirror.

After the meet-and-greet we headed outside to explore the playground. There are two of those little plastic play houses and a plethora of plastic cars and trikes that captivated her so much so that she hardly even played with the playground part of it.

I love that this place is an old restored farm house and took a few outdoor shots so you could see how idyllic the setting is. This was one of our big selling points and one of the reasons I'm glad we didn't get into the public charter Montessori. Sure, free would have been incredibly awesome, and the school itself seemed great from the open house I attended, but it is in a really blighted neighborhood so the view from the playground (through the chain link fence) is of row upon row of boarded up row homes. Since we live in the city, I was pretty desperate to find Hannah a school located outside the concrete jungle. This private Montessori isn't fair from us at all, but it's far enough to smell and sound and look like the country.

This is another view from the playground, this time of the breezeway that leads to the individual classrooms.

This is the front of the school taken from the parking lot.

And finally, Hannah running around the little grassy knoll in the parking lot swinging around the sticks she found.

 

We had a really fun morning, and she had a fun 2 weeks at a camp at the end of June. I had to send Grammy with her on her first day because I had to teach, but Hannah adjusted quickly so Grammy was able to hang out in her car with a book. I tried to go in on day two in case Hannah still needed some adjustment time and also because I wanted to meet the teacher, but her teacher's aid met us at the door and after a nice greeting, she quickly swept Hannah away while I walked back to the car feeling a little forlorn. Their philosophy is that it is easier for the kids if they leave the parents rather than the parent leaving them. I get that, but I was still a little bummed.

Camp was for 2 hours every morning for 2 weeks. This is a lot for Hannah considering she has never in her life had to wake up and do the same thing every day of the week in her entire almost 3 years of existence. It was also a lot more time away from me than she's used to, and as a result, there were some mornings when she didn't want to go. On a few days, I bribed her (this is how we ended up with  a Ladybug Girl obsession but that's another blog post). I used the car pool option the rest of the days and let her assistant teacher help her out of her car seat and then help her back in at the end of the morning.  At the end of the day, the teaching assistant always raved about how engaged Hannah was all the time and how well she did. After a few days she asked if Hannah was enrolled in the fall and was relieved when I said yes commenting that Hannah is definitely ready. That was nice to hear! Hopefully she'll be ready for the primary program in the fall and will adjust to being gone every morning quickly.

Some things I love about this style of teaching/this school:

• Classes consist of three ages. When Hannah starts in September, she'll be one of the youngest kids in the classroom having just turned 3 and will be in that class until she is 6. The 6-year-olds will have the opportunity to develop leadership skills and help with younger children in the classroom, and the younger children will benefit from being able to learn from other children rather than from adults, which often increases learning. There is a big emphasis on working with a variety of age groups so that even in middle school, they will do projects that involve the primary school children, though obviously the activities that each grade does will differ according to age/skill.
• A French teacher comes around to the classroom for French lessons. It is very important to me that Hannah be exposed to other languages early on in life so this is a big plus.
• There is no emphasis on sharing. It has always seemed unnatural to me when at playdates another mom would make their child share something with Hannah just because Hannah wanted it. I mean, I don't advocate for being selfish, but I don't think a child should have to give up something just because another child wants it.  Learning patience and turn taking is important to me. At Montessori, a child who is engaged with an activity does not have to share that activity. When the first child is finished with it, another child may pick it up and play.
• I think the biggest appeal to me is the self-paced learning style. Prior to finding this school I was contemplating home schooling Hannah in a curriculum-free/life-learning environment. I didn't really want to home school, but I wanted to make sure she had the learning experience that I believe in, and if that was the only way to make that happen, so be it. Thankfully, there's Montessori. Here, children engage in a variety of age-appropriate activities at their own pace and spend as much or as little time on each activity as they want. The idea is that children learn better and remember more when they choose to learn it. I read one story of a home-schooled life-learning child who got really into chemistry as an adolescent and stuck with it until learning everything in a college textbook. He never picked it up again, but swears he remembers all of it as an adult. Rather than follow a strict curriculum in which you sit at a desk and learn what you are told to learn in just the amount that you are allowed to learn it, these kids move freely about the room and engage in whatever activities interest them. The teachers, or guides as they're called at Montessori, are trained to help facilitate deeper learning with each activity.
• Finally, the whole no-desk thing is incredibly appealing to me. As someone who finds it unbearably difficult to sit still for long periods of time chained to a desk (thank goodness I don't have to!!), I didn't want to force Hannah into that sedentary lifestyle. She's as active as her parents, and I think she'd have a hard time sitting on her butt all day long while teachers lecture from a chalkboard and try to cram as much rote memorizing into her little head as possible. 

 Hannah isn't even a student yet, and I have a lot more reading up to do on the subject so I'm sure I'm missing a ton, but these are the initial things that attracted me to this style of learning. Now, if you'll excuse me, it is way past this pregnant lady's bedtime.