Your hands….

A year ago, today you took your last flight, not in an airplane with a tail number as you serviced so many, no, it was one that took you right to that place where Mom was waiting for you…you both must have been so happy at your arrival!

I miss you, but knowing you are together somehow helps a lot…

Days like today remind me of endless hours that we shared, with me helping you to assemble some furniture out of beautiful wood, or fixing something to make it “function” again; now that I think of it more and more, I realize that your “hands” worked wonders, you made so many beautiful things, and me? Well, I still feel so proud to have been your “assistant”, handing over nails and screws, or sanding a piece of wood, painting it and then there was always this feeling of satisfaction with the results of “our work” together…

Your Hands, “teaching” me always that discipline and hard work is something that I acquired almost naturally, and I learned to appreciate more and more…I will value that always…

The confidence that emerges from the activities done with our hands, builds up our trust in ourselves, even if we don’t succeed at our first or second attempt…Montessori taught this…and it is certainly one of the many things that connected me to her teachings.

As quoted below, working with our hands is a way of developing the mind, and in many ways the “whole child”, its awareness, its confidence, its motivation and specially the values such as perseverance, discipline and the love of work itself…

Working with our hands with perseverance and discipline is something we, as Montessori Teachers aim to achieve with our students…as for me, I am so happy and proud that I had a “model” of all of these at home, with my dad and my mom.

With those principles they left quite a legacy!!

Work with our hands, offer our students meaning and purpose, alongside so many values needed for life today…let's foster these in our students following Montessori’s legacy too!

The hands help the development of the intellect. When a child is capable of using his hands, he can have a quantity of experiences in the environment through using them. In order to develop his consciousness, then his intellect, and then his will, he must have exercises and experiences.

Maria Montessori, The 1946 London Lectures, p. 130

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