Theme
5:02am March 31, 2015

Which reminds me…

…I went to a Catholic Montessori preschool.  And we did say a Grace of sorts, it was always the same:

We thank you Lord for the world so sweet
We thank you Lord for the food we eat
We thank you Lord for the birds that sing
We thank you Lord for everything

I was too young to understand a single word of it.

However, I do remember trying really hard to make out what sounds we were supposed to be making, and getting hung up on “birds”, because every single kid pronounced it differently – brrds, bwwds, fwwds, prrds, etc. in addition to “birds”.

Because so many preschoolers have trouble pronouncing things, I’d end up saying “We thank you lord for the foods that sing…” etc.

Oh, and I have no problem with saying grace or singing religious songs there.  It was a Catholic school, the convent was right next door to us, and my parents chose for me to go there.  That’s totally different from requiring these things in a more secular setting.

Also I’m the only person I know who had an amazingly good Catholic school experience and then had school pretty much go downhill from there for the rest of my life.  It was a really amazing school, and nothing like the stereotype of a Catholic school.  

Donna Williams has said that Montessori schools are really good for a certain type of autistic person, one who does their best learning by doing things on their own and sort of stumbling through it, although she wishes it was more kinesthetically-oriented so she wouldn’t feel totally left out in her best abilities.  That’s pretty much exactly how I’d describe my experience there – great for learners who prefer solitary learning on their own without being disturbed by other people (I was known to shriek if approached by kids, actually, so I really didn’t want to be disturbed if it broke through my social passivity that much), but not offering enough kinesthetic learning options to go with my exact pattern of abilities.  

(I’m certainly not a visual or auditory learner, I’d usually say kinesthetic, tactile, and olfactory.  Where tactile doesn’t just mean hands, it also means licking and chewing and mouthing inedible things to explore their texture, which I did all through grade school.)

Notes:
  1. expeditionhappiness said: I went to Montessori school through 5th grade and I loved it. We had a very large group of students with developmental or learning disabilities in the classroom with everyone toast and it was a model that could handle that so well
  2. september-storms said: When I was in year two (like seven years old) we had that exact same prayer! I thought it was just our school but apparently not. My school wasn’t Catholic though but yeah.
  3. withasmoothroundstone posted this