Elementary: Additional Resources

Some thoughts on resources in elementary. This topic generates a lot of personal e-mail questions!

• AMI albums are a framework with lots of meat. But if your children learn ONLY what is in the albums, they will not have everything they actually need. The point to the framework/meat analogy is that there is a LOT there - but your children are SUPPOSED to be exploring their own interests, going deeper. They are NOT supposed to have everything handed to them. Period. No long tedious lessons just because they need to get it (even if it is a great Montessori lesson! if it is long and tedious and does NOT spark interest, toss it out!). If you present everything in AMI albums AND provide time/space for interests to develop, THEN your children *will* get everything they need. 
• Therefore your children will NEED other resources. Of your choosing as to appropriateness, but of their choosing as to personal interests. 
• Yes, you can dictate some outside requirements. But these requirements plus the Montessori albums should still not be ALL your child learns. 
• Thus children should be taking cues from the lessons, exploring on their own and with classmates and coming to new discoveries of new subject areas. Positive peer influence! We want more of that!
• Children in homeschool situations may benefit from the parent having a few carefully selected other resources or plans to balance out what the child is missing from not being in the classroom: conversations, environmental activities and the like.