Welcome to the first post in our ongoing series about Montessori homeschooling. I hope you’ll find these interviews as enlightening as I do: real moms making Montessori a reality for their kids. I’m super excited to introduce Angela, homeschooling mom extraordinaire, who consistently inspires with creative Montessori homeschool adaptations and learning ideas.
Please introduce yourself.
I’m Angela Chang, also known as @angelamomtessori on Instagram! I was a Montessori Toddler teacher for 6 years before I had my own kids and decided to stay home with them. I have two daughters who have known no other way of living. I now blog about our Montessori life and homeschool preschool at MOMtessoriLife.com. I also have a couple of e-courses to help other parents who want to incorporate Montessori principles at home or are interested in beginning Montessori homeschooling at the preschool level, and I work with many parents one-on-one through my consulting business.
Why do you choose to homeschool your children?
When my first daughter was born, I kept teaching, and she attended the Montessori Infant community at my school. Our commute was pretty long, and after a year of her going there, I decided to just stay home and raise my children the Montessori way. When it was time to start looking at preschools, I wasn’t happy with the ones close to us. The closest authentic Montessori preschool was the one I had recently left, and I didn’t want to be driving two hours round trip anymore. So I decided to just use what I knew and teach my children myself!
3. With all of the options, methodologies and curriculums available to homeschoolers today, what drew you to Montessori homeschooling specifically?
Once you’ve been a Montessori teacher and seen a classroom of 20+ children working together, there’s really no other way. Montessori makes the most sense to me, and I’ve seen the way it draws children in to really love learning – so there was no other choice for my family. Of course we can’t perfectly replicate a Montessori classroom at home, but I think we’ve found a pretty good way of doing it by now. Montessori schools tend to be pretty pricey, so I am very thankful that I have been trained in the method and felt confident enough to provide a Montessori-at-home education for my girls in their formative years.
4. Do you have a dedicated homeschooling space? Why or why not?
When my girls were younger, we just used half of our living room for their Montessori materials. That worked well for us at the time, since work and play intermixed. We began house hunting when my girls were 4 and 2.5, and I was very excited to find a home with a finished attic space on the third floor – I just knew it would be the perfect place for our homeschool preschool room. As they grew older, the Montessori materials also grew larger – and we needed a separate space to house it all. I like having a dedicated homeschooling space now that they are 4 and 6 and their work is more involved.
5. If you had the chance to tell yourself one thing at the beginning of your homeschool journey, what would it be?
To relax and not care what other people think about it! At first, every time someone asked the girls if they were in preschool yet, I would cringe because I knew the next question would be, “Where do you go to preschool?” Every time, I answered, “Well, I used to be a preschool teacher, so we’re just doing preschool at home” – as if I needed an excuse to do it. I still catch myself making excuses now that my oldest started public school kindergarten, but then I remind myself that it’s none of their business why we made the choices we did for our children. I know that deciding to do homeschool preschool with my girls was the right decision for our family, and I don’t regret it for a second. I also know that my expertise remains in the preschool years, and so I have no regrets sending my daughter to public school when she asked to go there.
Thank you so much Angela. 🙂
