With Easter fast approaching and parents putting together Easter baskets for their Children, we thought that we’d touch a bit on the topic of Fantasy in Montessori. Does Easter Bunny exist in the world of Montessori? How do we talk to our children about fantastical characters?
Well, let’s start with the facts:
- The part of the human brain that is responsible for logic and rational thinking is not fully developed until the age of 6. That’s why young children are often confused whether dragons and unicorns actually exist, that is also why they are scared of the monsters under their beds and believe in Tooth Fairy and Santa Clause.
- Another known fact is that when Maria Montessori first set up her classrooms, she has put there many classic children’s toys including toys for pretend play. However, when observing children, she noticed that they preferred working with the items from real world rather than toys. So for example, children were more interested in helping out with cooking real food with real utensils rather than playing in a pretend kitchen. Dr Montessori then removed all the items for pretend play from the environment. This is why in today’s Montessori classrooms you won’t see any dollhouses, books with stories about unrealistic creatures or with cartoonish pictures.
What does this mean for families following Montessori principles at home? It means that we should try and create the environment for our Children that is as realistic as possible:
- Offer books with high quality realistic illustrations or photographs, with stories that can happen in real life;
- You may choose to skip the pretend kitchen and rather invest in a learning tower and child-size cooking utensils so that your Child can help you with the meal prep in the kitchen;
- If you allow screen time in your family, avoid cartoons and TV shows that are not based in reality, choose high quality documentary-type of programs instead (for example, national geographic series about wild animals);
- If you decide to buy your Child a doll, give preference to those that are anatomically correct.
As you might see, Fantasy is a hard limit in a true Montessori environment, because we want our children to learn about the real world that they live in and we don’t want to confuse them with all the mythical and unrealistic creatures.
With all that being said, there are couple of other things that we would like to mention.
First, it is almost impossible to keep your Child completely separate from the ‘pop’ culture. She might be invited to a ‘Frozen’ or ‘Paw Patrol’ themed birthday party or hear kids talking about the unicorns at the playground.
Second, the purpose of this post is just to share information about the place of ‘fantasy’ in Montessori. And it is up to each individual family to decide how much of it will be allowed in their homes. You may decide to let your Child believe in Santa Clause and Easter Bunny or you may choose to explain Her that they are fantastical creatures that don’t exist and yet still have lots of fun celebration holidays with some great family traditions. The choice is all yours and there is no wrong here! You don’t have to be 100% Montessori for your Child to benefit from it.
In one of our future posts we will talk about Imagination vs Fantasy, and the place of Imagination in Montessori.