Elements of Montessori education you can add to your homeschool

Despite having gone through teacher training and even working in teacher education for many years, I didn’t know much about Montessori until I became a mom. In teacher training, we had learned some basics, but nothing that really went into detail or was easy to apply. A new (2023) study found¹ that learners educated with a Montessori approach were better in several areas than those in control groups. So what are those areas? And what are some elements of Montessori education that one can add to one’s homeschool so you can evaluate whether they are a good fit for your child?

What does the study say about the effects of Montessori education?

The study² is a meta-analysis. A meta-analysis is done so one can see beyond just one study. Are there effects that show up again and again? That means a meta-analysis actually looks at lots of different individual studies.

In this case, the analysis compared Montessori education to other types of education, labelled for instance ‘traditional’, ‘conventional’, ‘national curriculum’, or ‘Steiner education’. It included studies from around the world, dealing with 3- to 11-year-old children. So the results might not be valid for older children.

What did the meta-analysis find? Results between the studies varied, but overall, Montessori education led to better results than other types of education in the following areas:

• “social skills” (g=0.22)”
• “creativity” (g=0.25)”
• “motor skills” (g=0.27)” and
• “academic achievement (g=1.10)”

The g in the brackets stands for Hedges’ g. The higher the value, the stronger the effect³, i.e., the more positive results for the Montessori-educated children compared to children in other types of education. So while the effect in the first three areas is small, there’s a big positive effect for academic achievement.

Applying Montessori ideas to your learner

Because the meta-analysis looks at many different studies, it doesn’t give answers to which aspects of Montessori education are especially beneficial. Here are some ideas you can try out in your homeschool:

• Observe your learner. Montessori is big on observing the child⁴. Where is s/he at? The better you know your learner, the better you can help him/her.
• Give your learner specific feedback. Instead of just saying “Good job,” Montessori encourages the big people in children’s lives to really observe and then be specific.⁵ For instance, you might say “You put away your blocks by yourself.”
• Give your learner prepared, step-by-step materials. Montessori education takes a skill and breaks it down. It tries to offer materials that “are challenging to master but not so difficult that they will give up”⁶. Materials are then offered to build up the skill step-by-step over time. Each activity is shown to the child. Then s/he can work on it.
• Rotate toys and activities. Only a certain number of activities/ toys are out and accessible at any one time. The rest is stored away. Activities/ toys are then rotated between being accessible and storage⁷.
• Create an environment that helps them do things on their own. Montessori education looks at the whole room. If a child often needs help with a specific thing, what could be done to alter the environment to make it easier for them to do it themselves?⁸ That could, for instance, mean spill-wiping cloths at a level they can access.
• Make the environment and materials beautiful and uncluttered. Montessori education encourages educators to only have a certain number of activities/toys out at any one time, making the environment uncluttered. It’s also big on making the environment and activities beautiful and attractive for the learners.⁹
• Help them learn from older learners. Children of different age groups can learn from each other. Montessori encourages learning in mixed-age groups¹⁰. Besides siblings, that can also, for instance, include children from homeschool groups.

Other resources

If you’re on Facebook, several groups focus specifically on ideas and advice for implementing Montessori at home. Some websites offer activity lists for inspiration of activities to do with different age groups, like this one focusing on the early years.

References

1. Demangeon, A., Claudel-Valentin, S., Aubry, A. & Tazouti, Y. (2023) A meta-analysis of the effects of Montessori education on five fields of development and learning in preschool and school-age children. Contemporary Educational Psychology 73. 102182 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0361476X2300036X ↩︎
2. Demangeon, A., Claudel-Valentin, S., Aubry, A. & Tazouti, Y. (2023) A meta-analysis of the effects of Montessori education on five fields of development and learning in preschool and school-age children. Contemporary Educational Psychology 73. 102182 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0361476X2300036X ↩︎
3. Statistics How to. (n.d.) Hedges’ g: Definition, Formula. https://www.statisticshowto.com/hedges-g/#:~:text=What%20is%20Hedges%27%20g%3F,Cohen%27s%20d%20are%20extremely%20similar. (last checked Aug 1, 2023) ↩︎
4. Davies, S. (2019). The Montessori Toddler. Workman Publishing Company (eBook) ↩︎
5. Davies, S. (2019). The Montessori Toddler. Workman Publishing Company (eBook) ↩︎
6. Davies, S. (2019). The Montessori Toddler. Workman Publishing Company (eBook) ↩︎
7. Davies, S. (2019). The Montessori Toddler. Workman Publishing Company (eBook) ↩︎
8. Davies, S. (2019). The Montessori Toddler. Workman Publishing Company (eBook) ↩︎
9. Davies, S. (2019). The Montessori Toddler. Workman Publishing Company (eBook) ↩︎
10. Davies, S. (2019). The Montessori Toddler. Workman Publishing Company (eBook) ↩︎