Montessori's Second Great Lesson: The Coming of the Earth

After the introduction of Montessori’s First Great Lesson: The Coming of the Universe, lower elementary children are eager to explore The Second Great Lesson: The Coming of the Earth. This study of the Earth begins, as the Universe study began, with cultural origin stories from around the world, as well as the evolving story of the scientists which involves facts, evidence, and the Scientific Method. It incorporates physics, chemistry, geology, and physical geography. Children learn about the conditions which existed that allowed land to solidify and water to form in the first place.

As in the Montessori 3-6 classroom, land and water forms are introduced in the 6-9 environment with greater detail and sophistication, and with different materials. In the 3-6 environment, children often pour water into shaped land forms to demonstrate land and water forms as opposites. For example, an island – which is land surrounded by water – is the opposite of a lake – which is water surrounded by land. This holds for the many other land and water forms studied in greater depth at the 6-9 level, such as isthmus and strait, cape and peninsula, etc.

Children are introduced to plate tectonics and discover how land forms (which we call continents) have been changing and moving on top of the crust of this planet for billions of years. This study helps us to discuss the eternal situation on this planet of climate change, which is affecting us as humans with great importance. Over the years, I have used various food items to demonstrate the three kinds of plate boundaries – transforming, convergent, and divergent. (This nomenclature also connects to terminology used in geometry lessons for some of the children, further deepening their neural pathways.) Whether I’ve used molasses, marshmallow fluff, or maple syrup with graham crackers, the learning environment smells sweet for several days. Children enjoy the texture of real materials as symbols of giant planetary processes.

The study of geology continues with the factors that allowed for plate tectonic activity – volcanoes and earthquakes. At the 6-9 level, children enjoy making their own exploding volcanoes (using baking soda, vinegar, and food coloring) and research famous eruptions to see how these natural disasters later affected animal and plant lives.

Long before the first life forms existed, rocks did, and children learn about the three main kinds: sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic. Real examples of these rocks sit on our geology shelves waiting to be touched and understood. This photo shows an extension that involves creating a sedimentation jar, revealing the layers that these rocks make underneath our feet!

As with land and water forms, the continent puzzle map cabinet is introduced in Montessori 3-6 classrooms and used with more depth and detail at the 6-9 level. Children make their own maps of the continents, which provides both a direct aim (identifying land forms and water forms by name and shape) and many indirect aims: refining fine motor skill, connecting the child with places of relative distance, and conceptualizing the spiritual aspect of self in relation to land and water forms of such sizes and at such distances from one another.

The main purpose of the continent puzzle maps is not that a child will memorize all of the names and locations of countries in Asia, but that s/he begins to grasp his/her smallness within the infinite Universe, in terms of space, size, and time. Children often share the labor of this work with a friend and ask the other to hand him/her a certain country so that it may be traced, then labeled, then colored, then brought home to wallpaper one’s bedroom.

Finally, children continue learning about the Work of Wind and the Work of Water by studying the atmosphere, erosion, and weather. A fun way to explore these topics is to learn how to discriminate visually between different kinds of clouds, their shapes, and their meanings when seen above us. Some clouds portend rainy weather, others clear skies, and still others tell us humans on the ground what speed and motion the wind is taking 25,000 feet up in the sky. These photos demonstrate secondary extensions children make after first studying the three- or four-part cloud card materials. 

These hands-on activities both serve the multiple intelligences of different kinds of learners and ingrain the geographical concepts so that (just as with rocks and land and water forms) children make connections in nature or on trips with their families, as well as within a learning environment inside a building. After learning these initial concepts with the concrete Montessori materials, any location transforms into a classroom of the mind!

The Earliest Life Forms on Earth

Montessori’s Great Lessons give the universe to the child and encourage discoveries. After the expansive First Great Lesson: The Coming of the Universe (which incorporates astronomy, chemistry, and physics), Montessori 6-9 year-old children explore the Second Great Lesson: The Coming of the Earth. In addition to hearing stories from various cultures around the world about how our planet came to be, children are also told the evolving story of the Earth’s history as told by the scientific community through facts, evidence, and the Scientific Method.

The Second Great Lesson: The Coming of the Earth incorporates geology, physical geography, and biology. The life sciences shine during this curricular study of the earliest life forms on the planet. Having explored the smallest particles of matters, atoms, in the previous Great Lesson, here children learn about kinds of cells – prokaryote and eukaryote – which led to bacteria such as protists and early plant life in the form of cyanobacteria. 

In my current Montessori-hybrid charter environment, we explored cell structures – their parts and how they function, as well as how they differ. One of the most popular lessons I give involves using egg yolks and a fork to discriminate between the two main kinds of cells.

Children are motivated to read about and identify the parts of the cells using three- or four-part card Zoology materials. (Three-part cards feature an image, a label, and a combined image and label card. Four-part cards are mainly used in 6-9 and 9-12 learning environments for children with advanced decoding and reading comprehension skills.) After learning about prokaryote and eukaryote cells, children investigate which kinds of living things contain these kinds of cells. They then may choose to make models with objects representing different parts. These extensions deepen and broaden connections children will later make when they concern themselves with more advanced life forms.

As we move into the Timeline of Life that began with the Proterozoic Era of Earth History, children lay out the timeline (color-coded by era). 

They see just how long one main life form – the cnidarian (one example of which is a jellyfish) -- existed virtually alone on the planet, evolving and adapting as the world became cleaner due to adaptations of plant and animal life filtering the air and water of acid rain produced by volcanic off-gassing. 

These invertebrates paved the way for later animal forms to create skeletons and become vertebrates, and they remain some of the longest life forms in existence, due in large part to the gift they made of their bodies for the lives of others.

Montessori Language Materials: Intuitive and Inspiring!

Maria Montessori created self-correcting card materials for children to use independently to understand the function of sounds (phonics), the meaning of words (vocabulary and word study), and the function of words (mechanics, grammar, and sentence analysis). What is amazing is that she did this in Italian over a century ago, and the Montessori method of presenting language concepts works beautifully in all cultures around the world where it is presented.

For this blog post, I will focus on phonics, word study, and grammar. A buzzword in education for the past twenty years or so has been “phonemic awareness”, the ability to hear, isolate, blend, and replicate sounds and sound combinations. Since one of the tenets of Montessori education is the presentation of concepts in their most concrete form, phonics are presented as “the building blocks of language”. 

For the past several years – both at the private Montessori school where I previously worked and in my current Montessori-hybrid charter environment – I have had great success with weekly “sound games” which introduce the concepts which are also present in Montessori language materials, such as the amazing collection of phonics drawers made by Waseca. This material is also consistent with the Orton-Gillingham method in its application for children with dyslexia, which often occurs undiagnosed at the 6-9 age, and is also helpful for children of all abilities.

What is a “sound game”? I have introduced this lesson mainly as a brainstorming session with students about the sounds we hear, the tongue placements and breathing associated with sounds, and whether we consider those sounds vowels or consonants. As children, most current adults did not learn how to be “phonemically aware”; instead, we simple memorized which letters were vowels and which were consonants. Unfortunately, we were taught incorrectly. 

Vowels and consonants are sounds; letters are pictographs associated with sounds. The word “vowel” is Latin for “vocalize”, and the word “consonant” is Latin for “with sound”. This is why vowels are sounds made with an open mouth, and consonants are sounds which involve an ejection of air or vibration. Along with tongue placement (which is most notably used in speech therapy), Montessori children understand by touch, visual input, and sound what kind of phoneme they are making or hearing.

Sometimes in “sound games”, we make a chart with three columns for beginning, middle, and end placement of the sound in a word. In the past, as a primary extension, I have used a ball of yarn passed across a circle of our community to connect all these sounds together; I started and ended the circle, and at the end, we lifted and released our yarn to make a crazy shape. Currently, I ask children to offer a word with the sound in it, identify its location (beginning, middle, or end) in the word, and challenge the child to use the word with the sound in a sentence. This primary extension challenges children to understand, use, and create meaning from sounds. A secondary extension might be making a chart of their own words the following week, as a way of measuring memory of the lesson and continued application.

Maria Montessori’s phonics materials, which are often used first in 3-6 year-old classrooms, are integral to many 6-9 year-old’s confidence with both writing and the decoding process involved in reading. These materials have phonemes such as short vowels in one color (blue, to match the vowel color of the Movable Alphabet used in 3-6) with other letters in words in black. With consonant blends, the same two letters will be in red with other letters in black. 

Primary phonics card materials allow children to match vocabulary with an image card, while elementary phonics card materials allow children to decode as many as ten different words with a shared phoneme. After being introduced to the materials, children feel confident working independently or sometimes collaboratively with a peer. They read the words aloud to an adult, and sometimes they will challenge themselves in a self-selected manner in order to ingrain the vocabulary more deeply.

Word study encompasses many different functions of language, from syllabication to synonyms to rhyming words to homographs. Children study root words with prefixes, root words with suffixes, and compound words. The comprehensive Word Study Skyscraper made by Montessori Research and Development contains 5,000 matching cards, with each concept including up to ten drawers each for multiple practice. 

This Montessori material encourages children to broaden and deepen their sense of the English language, especially with the use of reference materials such as a children’s illustrated dictionary and thesaurus. Children may also challenge themselves in a self-selected manner by writing sentences or sets of words.

Finally, Montessori grammar is a beautiful endeavor in storytelling that Maria Montessori designed with her ever-present eye for detail. Each of the nine grammar symbols – noun, verb, article, adjective, adverb, pronoun, preposition, conjunction, and interjection – has its own color, shape, and story. For example, the story of the noun is about one of the biggest things on Earth – the Great Pyramid of Giza. The story of the verb follows the exciting adventures of a red sphere, which most children see (and treat!) as a ball. With the exception of the article and adjective – which, together with the noun, are introduced as the Noun Family story – each symbol has its own impressionistic key experience. A miniature environment such as a farm is often used in a Montessori 3-6 or 6-9 classroom as a physical place for children to make meaning with parts of speech.

Just as Montessori children come to recall the color coding of the bead cabinet and the stamp game, they enjoy remembering the shapes and colors of the grammar symbols, eventually coding them in written form on paper using a grammar stencil. (Again, Waseca makes a great one that is accessible for small hands.) Children get creative and have fun while learning, making connections and discoveries as they construct meaning from the world around them. 

The children featured here are reacting to eating a slice of grapefruit, as part of our Noun Family lesson. One offered this sentence: The sour grapefruit is disgusting.