The theme of this year’s Children’s Art Exhibition, “The Art of Geography”, captures the global nature of our Montessori classroom. Every child yearns to understand their place in the world and to respect the diversity of people and cultures in our global community.
Imagination, coupled with the stroke of a paintbrush, allows our children to bring the animals of the Serengeti Plains, mandalas of India, coral reefs of Australia and a Chinese rooster into our Montessori world. For our Montessori children, the world is not just an abstract concept of “somewhere out there”. Instead, they are able to recognize places on a map or globe and much more; they experience how people dress, what they eat, the type of home they live in, the animals that live in these regions, different climates, and more.
Our Montessori children begin to recognize that though we may be separated by vast oceans and sandy deserts, we are all truly connected because as human beings we all share the same fundamental needs. This is the beauty of Montessori. Our outlook is a global one. We recognize the need to preserve our environment for the generations to come. We practice unity, cooperation and a deep and abiding respect for ourselves and the people we share this world with. We bring the global world into our classrooms, one brush stroke at a time.
