Oh what a year!
We had our final day of class for 2021 at Hilltop Children’s House today, and it was a wonderful day.
The children frequently hum or sing to themselves as they’re busy at their work in a Montessori Children’s House, and today the sound in the room was a low hum as the multitude of small voices mixed together. Sometimes they’re singing a song of their own composition about the work they’re doing, sometimes it’s just a random tune, and sometimes it’s a standard, like, oddly, Jingle Bells! But whatever it was, the overall effect was the most beautiful music in the world.
The year began with twelve children in the house, but over the course of the year two left due to family choices related to COVID. Fortunately, we never had more than a couple of days affected by the pandemic, and our year was mostly healthy.
As far as the children in the room, the year showed the sort of growth you hope to see in the children growing in society. Older children helping younger children learn new skills or helping them to clean things up. Children learning to deal with conflict. Children learning how to ask politely rather than demand when they want something. Children greeting each other with multilingual salutations (based on a song they learned). Children — on their own, without prompting — reciting back poems they learned.
And on the academic side, the children learned about continents and countries, the life cycle and parts of butterflies and other animals, how to write letters and words (in cursive) as well as their numbers, parts of speech and how they work in a sentence, plus colors.
Additionally, in mathematics, children learned skip counting, basic concepts of alegbra, shape names and how shapes relate to each other, and even how to do division with three-digit numbers.
They also imbibed physical-conceptual lessons about loud and quiet, rough and smooth, hard and soft, warm and cold, and large and small.
Oh, and how to slice a banana with a real paring knife, and then how to wash dishes, dry them, and put them away where they belong.
Everything one expects in a Montessori school, we strive to provide.
The final day of classes is always bittersweet because it means this little society is breaking up for the summer, and next year we will be missing some of our children, whether because they aged out or because their parents don’t send them back.
But we will welcome others, and we’ve already received applications for our open slots — we’re still accepting applications, find information about next year and get the application here.
And this summer has a lot of promise for big updates at Hilltop Children’s House. We’re hoping to have a major renovation of our backyard, plus have a number of new windows installed at the house so that much-needed natural light can flow into the children’s house. Support our renovation projects here!
For those who have supported us, THANK YOU! We simply would not be here, able to provide this service, without your support.
