Ski season began for Ava today! She and Peter hit the slopes, while Carter and I stayed home—a welcome change from last year when I had to attend with an infant Carter because Ava was not that comfy being away from me for hours and hours. It is just no fun to drive 45 minutes to a ski lodge only to stay inside and entertain a small child who cannot be put down on a muddy floor. We had a fun time by ourselves, and I think Carter relishes this time.

I recently began a few sewing projects for Ava’s doll. I cannot overstate how remarkable this is for me. As I have mentioned, I am not crafty. When the Little Dippers teacher used to bring out the craft basket full of felt, wool, embroidery thread, needles and other implements I would experience visceral panic and would do whatever I could to avoid a display of my incapacity to stitch. However, doll clothes are expensive. And it finally dawned on me that I could probably figure out how to piece together a coat and hat (it is winter after all, and it seems silly for Helena-the doll-not to have a warm outfit). And, I did it! Sleeves and all. It took forever, but it is cute and it fits. Anyway, my point is not to be self-congratulatory, but rather to make note of the impact this had on Ava. If there is anything that will keep me reaching for the sewing basket, it is how fascinated she is by the production. She constantly asks to have a ‘sewing project,’ and so I give her a piece of fabric, some thread, some scissors and a pin and she will sit there for an hour, ‘constructing’ various things. Yesterday, she made a book for her doll—she took a piece of felt and put pieces of thread on it in various shapes and then folded it over and poked at it with the pin—voila! a book!

The other thing that I found interesting but will probably be profoundly dull reading for everyone else was the way she ordered a set of 10 boxes of descending size. They are nesting boxes, and thus each one is slightly smaller than the previous one. I asked her to lay them side by side from biggest to smallest the other day, and she immediately did it—no need to review big bigger and biggest! Tonight she asked if she could do it again, and since there was not enough room to lay them all in a line along the wall, she put them out in a very specific and interesting order where the 1st 2 went side by side, then the 3rd one was placed under the 2nd one, the 4th one next to the 3rd, the 5th one under the 4th, the 6th next to the 5th, and so on, maintaining the same pattern all the way to the end. And it looked like she did it without planning it—it was just a pattern that she devised and adhered to almost unconsciously. Basically it was a diagonal progression of pairs, if that makes any sense. Anyway, I thought it was intriguing.

In light of the above, it will be of no surprise that I am reading some Montessori books, where this sort of exercise is discussed extensively. It is very interesting reading, and especially in comparison to the Rudolf Steiner books. He is the founder of the Waldorf theory of education, and often these two theories are considered to be in opposition to each other. I can see why this is thought to be the case, and certainly the two authors are very different people, but honestly, I see more similarities than differences. Primarily, both are concerned with not pushing the child, not “teaching,” but rather allowing the child to learn through his or her senses/body. The difference appears to be in the conception of what is occurring in the child’s mind as he or she grows and learns. And a lot of this has a tremendous amount to do with the personal aesthetics and opinions of the two authors. A lot has been said about Maria Montessori’s negative opinion of fantasy life and fantasy play vs. Steiner’s heavy emphasis on it. But MM was a physician, a scientist and Italian, thus presumably Roman Catholic, all of which would lead one to be less than supportive of a mythical world of ‘false gods!’ RS was a philosopher and deeply influenced by his own spiritual experiences growing up and was convinced both of their veracity and their importance, and so he fashioned his educational theory around them. However, these two people, coming from absolutely opposite sides of the spectrum, ended up making some of the same observations about how children learn. They came to different conclusions as to what sort of materials are necessary, and what types of learning should take place, but they both seem to be in agreement that kids learn not through overt teaching but rather through their bodies and their experiences. MM puts a lot of emphasis on the senses and RS on imitation, but both talk of exposing the child to practical life—allowing them to become familiar and proficient at the day to day tasks that the adults surrounding them are doing. It seems to me that with careful reading the 2 theories could be compared and a powerful educative theory distilled from them that focuses on the actual methods and eliminates what might simply be personal bias resulting from cultural and personality differences.

This might already exist, and if it does, hooray, but right now that task is a tad beyond my scope.