Montessori Elementary Art Album - Now Ready!

Legoboy has been helping me in a BIG way of late...

Not only has he been taking photographs, learning to edit them, and all that photography entails, he has been bringing me food while I sit on the couch working and provides a series of snuggles and kisses to keep me focused and motivated.

And testing everything out for me, for you, for your children.

Ok, so anyone on Facebook the last 2 days knows that I was LOOKING for distractions. Sometimes when something is on the to-do list for a LONG time, it kind of takes over. The to-do list needs that item on it, it cannot, will not, never will budge - even an inch.

Thus, it was physically painful to do one hour's worth of work to finish up the Elementary Montessori Art Album for my wonderfully patient Keys of the Universe participants - it only took me 14 hours.

All day, our last full vacation day at Grandma and Papa's to boot. I thought that would be enough motivation to finish that last hour's work before the boys woke up.

Nope. So much for vacation (for the record, I don't know how to take a vacation, just to be clear).

But at long last.

Here it is!!!!


The e-mail announcement that just went out:


I am so excited to share a new addition to the Keys of the Universe Album set - the art album is ready! It includes slightly modified presentations from the primary albums (EPL, Language, Sensorial) with additional album pages, skills and notes for the elementary child. What key skills lay the foundation for a strong elementary experience that allows for creativity and self-expression at all ages, especially in adolescence (Margaret Homfray noted in one of her lectures the necessity of teaching basic handskills to the younger children, so that they are not "learning" a new basic skill during the emotional adolescent years, when all they should be focusing on is expressing themselves with those basic skills.



Table of contents is here:
http://keysoftheuniverse.com/albums/ (click on the title of the Art album)

The art album is packaged with the music album here:
http://keysoftheuniverse.com/elementary/course/view.php?id=71
with Online Support (access to discussion community, downloadable materials, resource sharing, etc.) here:
http://keysoftheuniverse.com/elementary/course/view.php?id=65

Or individually at Garden of Francis:
to print or download: http://gardenoffrancis.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=27_24&products_id=274
to download: http://gardenoffrancis.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=27_24&products_id=268

Language - An Early Book

Going through some of our previous work and found this booklet in its earliest stages - on the city of Ancient Rome:

"Hello, I am (Legoboy),
I will a(ccompany) you t(hrough) Rome."
Note the lack of spelling, thus abbreviation ;)
I did edit out his name which he had beautifully
written in all lower-case cursive ;) 

Some tracings - some free drawing

He is hiding on every page in addition to his spoken blurb. 

on the left is a helmet - he says "scary!"

This was entirely free work - not directly related to any particular school work at the time. It could have been connected and if he went to school, and did it there, it would be "school" but at home we have re-define what is school and what is home ;)   So this one was personal interest work, thus I did not critique spelling, etc - instead mentally noting what needed work during our regular school time and presenting the appropriate album pages (lesson plans) for those skills in our usual fun Montessori way :) 

Embellish your work!

Sample from other work I've seen
Borders around the page or around sections/problems
Separators between sections
Just to fill in some space

In Montessori we say, "DOODLE!"

Ok, so we don't say that. We DO say, "Embellish!"

We want the children to cherish their work, so we allow them the opportunity to personalize it, fulfilling the fundamental human needs towards vanitas: to embellish oneself and one's environment.

All Montessori parents and teachers reading this, raise your hand if you have NEVER been tempted to embellish the children's environment on some level or another - to the point of being TOO much?

Not ONE hand should be raised! ;)

We want the children to learn balance, so we allow embellishment from the beginning, integrating art and daily work, even when the subject matter is not necessarily art.

But isn't it all art? Math is art, language is art, music is art, history is full of art and those timelines are works of art, geometry is pure art in my mind, geography is an art --- all these things have grace, beauty, boundaries, creativity ---- ART.

So why isn't this information available online anywhere, on all those Montessori blogs and all those Montessori albums that provide samples!? I don't know! It's a bit frustrating, because it is so basic to Montessori, especially elementary Montessori. But it starts in primary with the stamp game in particular - embellishing the row between two problems.

My son's sample today. He chose to use markers
for the first time. Please note: Markers do not mix well with
colored pencils. Any work done in pencil should be
embellished with color pencils, NOT markers.
Use markers as a medium to themselves on their
own separate sheet of paper, if at all. 

My son has always done embellishment of some kind and he LOVES it. The work means something to him and he's perfecting his art skills.

 I will show you an example of one I'm not proud of because he rushed it. It was not meaningful and he even said so. We discussed the reality that if he doesn't WANT to embellish, he doesn't have to.

And we discussed the reality that markers and writing pencils and colored pencils don't mix well. The aesthetics are lost.

Therefore, all is not lost, because this experience prompted discussion on balance, necessity and art media usage.


What about work plans and work contracts? Well, these should generally not be embellished - perhaps very lightly (instead of a checkmark, a creative child could use another symbol) - now the work journal could be a place for art, if you use one for the child to document his or work! The work journal can be embellished in any way the situation allows. While it is not the place for the child to store finished work (only a place to record time spent and what was done; perhaps answer a follow-up question), many children prefer to draw their work into these journals or separate entries with fancy designs.

Tessellation Patterns

While there is no specifically AMI Montessori album page for tessellations - they are just plain fun! And when presented right, with the right materials, they fit right in with Montessori.

While we do not encourage the children to create images (we want them to explore the shape, and the function of each shape - not be focused on creating boats and flowers) - elementary children do utilize them to create images. I encourage the exploration of shape and function and steer them away from creating images until it is inevitable.

Some samples of our work:

a friend's toes

exploring different kinds of flowers

what if we just use hexagons? what would happen?
note: this particular mode teaches far more
 more than creating a flower teaches a child ;) 

she was exploring pure shape; filling in gaps with other shapes,
seeing where it would lead (this is a transition stage into
creating intentional images)

Purely exploring with shapes - and look at the beautiful pattern emerging!