Montessori Tides School – Jacksonville Beach, FL

Math for the child is like all the other subjects found in the Montessori Tides curriculum, it develops from the child’s own interest and desire to learn. Many people misunderstand, at first, what it means for a child to desire to learn math at such a young age (3-6). They remember how they learned addition, subtraction and multiplication tables, hours upon hours of tedious and painful repetition.

Today this same boring method is still the approach in many conventional preschool and elementary school settings. I will never forget the day when my daughter was in 2nd grade and made an alarming statement, “I hate math as much as my teacher hates teaching it”. I can assure the root of her statement wasn’t the child’s lack or teacher’s lack. Clearly the school system had allowed math to take on

The Montessori Tides prepared environment is equipped with special didactic materials that are, according to Dr. Maria Montessori, “keys to the world,” because she carefully designed them to make the world accessible to the child. They also aid the child’s psychic development toward functional independence. She found children who are “functionally independent” are happy, well-adjusted children that can think for themselves, do for themselves, and are disciplined enough to understand the consequences of their actions.

Dr. Montessori developed the Montessori Materials over 100 years ago. In 1907, in the first Montessori Children’s House, she began experimenting on the effective use of the materials by allowing the children to freely explore with them while she observed how they responded to them. Because their use had proven to be so successful, today Montessori Tides authentic school still uses these materials to implement

As you may have remembered from our last blog we are focusing on the beginning of a new year on our growth from 2011. Last time we marked the growth in the child at Montessori Tides School. This time we mark the growth in the school itself.

Detailing this growth goes beyond an outward or upward measure. After all, real growth begins inwardly. As I have watched the school progress throughout 2011, I believe there are definite milestones worth admiring. Two of these milestones we have already discussed and celebrated. First, was the joy of having our upper-elementary classroom restored. Second, in 2011 we celebrated our 25th year in Jacksonville Beach.

An old proverb states that “as the twig is bent, so grows the tree.”We know that early childhood training does, indeed, set the direction of

Montessori Tides School continues to stoke the flame. In the video below, Nancy Hatton, Lead Lower-Elementary Directress shares to you a living and breathing story about teaching the child.

If you are unable to view the embedded video, click here.

Brad Hatton shared once, “Montessori teachers don’t find Montessori, Montessori finds them.” I feel this quote speaks volumes to the kind of teachers Tides beholds…those who are filled with a great love.

One day while observing in Ms. Nancy’s classroom a child was visiting from a conventional school with no prior Montessori experience. On that day I had a very special thought explode in my mind about Ms. Nancy. “There is nothing she couldn’t take on and that I am convinced of.” I now understand fully there is not a child Montessori Tides couldn’t teach because they

As 2011 draws to a close, it’s great to look back at a year as beautiful as it was extraordinary, detailing its many marks of growth. When gathering my thoughts to write this blog, I had a snapshot picture come into my mind.  In the snapshot I saw a hand marked measuring line. Similar to the one my grandmother has on the inside of her closet door. Each year she marked the height of her children, so she could see how much they had grown.This visual equivalent of growth began to resonate with me and I accepted to solely adopt this view is only the visible result of the unseen process that growth really is. When I think back to a family growth chart there is always a year or so where the measuring line appears the same, having an