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KINGSTON — In the toddler classroom, assistant teacher Lisa Witkoski and 19-year-old Alice sat on the floor, intently pondering a little toy kangeroo.
“What goes inside the pouch?” Witkoski asked the little girl. “Is it a fish, or a baby?”
A few steps away, 2-year-old Drue Paden matched plastic apples and metal pans to the appropriate “small,” “medium” and “large” spots on a mat while classmate Hunter Kruk arranged groups of three, four or five toy cars on the appropriate paper plates.
Meanwhile, three other tots gathered around Head of School Dennis Puhalla, who was visiting their classroom at the Wyoming Valley Montessori School, and listened to him read a story.
“Montessori was like nothing I’d seen before,” said Lynn Benkowski, head teacher in the toddler classroom, as her gaze took in all the activities. Though she’d anticipated a career teaching art in public schools, Benkowski said, when she encountered the alternative system of education Dr. Maria Montessori founded in 1907, “There was no going back.”
Montessori’s plan, Puhalla said, was for children to be free to explore. “It’s most important for the child to explore his or her environment and the teacher to follow.”
“At this level,” he said, indicating the toddlers, “almost everything is a free choice. You never discourage.”
The Montessori program, which Puhalla described as “unstructured in some ways, structured in others” is designed to give children abundant opportunities to learn at their own pace, using all five senses rather than sitting at a desk and listening or reading.
So, if you visit the Wyoming Valley Montessori School, you might see one child getting a tactile idea of which countries border each other by assembling a jigsaw puzzle shaped like Africa, another developing fine motor skills by scooping sand and a third using flat wooden squares and cubes to illustrate an addition problem.
As she grouped together the right number of squares and cubes on a recent morning, 5-year-old Abby May had visual proof that 3,684 plus 4,429 equals 8,113.
“This is the fun part,” teacher Sandra Nardone, sitting on the floor near Abby, told the girl. “You’re going to build a very tall tower.”
Opportunities for hands-on lessons in math, art, music and geography are emphasized at the Wyoming Valley Montessori School, where the 2015-2016 winter newsletter mentioned primary classes recently studied artists Edgar Degas and Norman Rockwell, “creating Degas ballerinas and our own rendition of Rockwell’s ‘The Connoisseur.’”
While kindergarten students began to practice yoga, Pilates and meditation, older students manipulated hands-on materials to transform a polygon into a rectangle and, in a grammar lesson, learned “to identify the eight types of adjectives.”
There’s time to practice manners, too, as when a child takes on the role of host or hostess and invites another child to “tea for two” at a tiny table.
“You put honey in it. Then put the spoon in and mix it up. It’s delicious,” said 5-year-old Juliet Ivy Lisman, who had invited Spencer Obmann to tea, knowing that, as hostess, it was her responsibility to tidy up afterwards.
On a recent visit to the school, Ann Marie Malloy, of Hanover Township, said she and her husband appreciate what their 2-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, finds at Montessori.
“We love that she has the opportunity to explore as she learns,” Malloy said. “The staff is terrific.”
“I’m a fan because the school allows a child to be independent while being guided by the teachers,” said Valarie Nat, of Shavertown, whose children, Tristan, Piper and Avery, attend the Montessori School. “I feel each child is allowed to be his own person. They nurture who he is and grow with him.”
Nat approves of the tri-level cycle that groups together children in three-year age spans. “You start out being the youngest in the class,” she said, “and then you get to become a mentor.”
Puhalla likes that aspect, too. “You’ll often see a 5-year-old helping a 3-year-old.”
