The Montessori Great Lessons are a series of stories that tell the single cosmic tale of the Earth from its creation to the marvelous interconnectedness of mankind. They’re the framework all of Montessori elementary is based on; these stories inspire the kids to want to learn math, science, language and more.
For the third cosmic tale, this year, we went camping on a small island not too far from home. The kids had no idea we were going, so as a Valentine’s Day surprise we loaded up the truck and headed toward the Gulf of Mexico.
The Coming of Humans begins (well more like the Coming of Life concludes but whatever) with the impressionistic lesson: the long black strip. It’s a summary of all we’ve covered so far following the story of the earth through the eons and eras as life begins and evolves until you get to the very end, a tiny white mark at the end of the strip symbolizes the first human existence in the history of the earth.
In the past we’ve done this lesson under an old, gorgeously sprawling Live Oak. This year I opted to save the presentation for the beach. I actually picked up the authentic material from Montessori Services (which you don’t have to do — it’s just a black strip with a white tip you can definitely DIY. I did last year). I found that rolling up the satin ribbon we used last year was a giant pain. It tangled really easily and got knotted a few times. This year went a lot smoother, but I realized I kind of hate this lesson. True confessions of a Montessori Mom.
Any tips on making rolling it up more enjoyable (outsourcing it to the kids perhaps)?
If you want to learn about the presentation itself, this story is great.
Here’s what the Long Black Strip looks like on a windy February day in Florida. The kids had so much fun. Truthfully they were a little distracted being at the beach in general, but then kids are distracted by all kinds of things — may as well be nature.
Homeschooling as a family
I think they understood this far better than the last time we did this lesson.
Later transitioning to a lesson on fundamental needs, I asked the kids to think about if we were to live here long term. What did we need to survive? The kids did really well with this — I realized Minecraft Survival Mode has actually primed them best for this lesson.
The kids made a list, and we talked about which needs were more for comfort than truly essential and worked on categorizing them — were they material or spiritual?
Then we camped. We had so much fun on the kids’ first camping trip. There were lots of observations made.
“Wow cooking over a fire is kinda hard.”
“It’s really, really dark.”
“There are so many stars.”
“I hope there are no wild animals watching us.”
Here’s more on fundamental needs.
I highly recommend checking out Montessori Handwork’s post on their fundamental needs camp. It’s phenomenal. I admire Carol Palmer and her work so much. I finally got around to ordering her Montessori handwork album: Work of Wool. I can’t wait to actually get it in my hands. It’s coming all the way from New Zealand. I’m positive it’ll be worth the wait!
On Deck
Up next, we’re slowing DIYing our own tree of life project. Lots of animal research. Also I’m adding in Waseca Biome’s Coral Reef Mat to the mix. More Timeline of Humans work, listening a lot to Story of Civilization, taking a look at ancient civilizations / wonders of the ancient world with yet another timeline, and I have a couple more on-topic fun field trips planned.
I lined up a trip to a local wool farmer and weaver to explore all that entails.
We have a primitive Stone Age festival not far from us; we will take a day trip to watch arrowhead making, tanning hides (apparently they use the brain of the animal for this. See I’m learning too), primitive bow and arrow competition etc. Should be fun. From there we continue with ancient civilizations, but we transition more into looking at the creation of paper to printing press and all things communication for the 4th Great Lesson: Story of Language. Story of numbers follows that. From there I’m going to hit geography — definitely need to cover some political geography as we’ve not done too much with it to date. Maybe back to physical geography works of water. I’ve also got a ton of Timberdoodle reviews on deck. A slew of cool items I picked out myself, so while those may not fit our work plan exactly, it’ll be fun.
We have the last bit of our lower elementary Math album I need to learn and present at least to Mary. I have a love hate relationship with Montessori Math. So many threads. So much abstraction here in elementary.
Outside of all that, we continue with daily at home vision therapy, twice a week music therapy, twice a week speech, violin lessons etc.
My oldest has an MRI, endo, & cardio check ups in the near future. Each of those appointments are a two hour drive away. Fun. The toddler is intense and learning lots of baby sign but mostly wants to destroy all things in sight for the sheer pleasure of destruction itself. Maybe I’ll give him an appropriately sized sledge hammer and baby hard hat and tell him to go reno the bathroom.
Follow the child after all.
