Our news from December

In this monthly news article we reflect on our activities from November and we look ahead. The most important thing to highlight from last month is that we launched the Spanish version of the Montessori Sports Fundamentals course. But… there is more news.

About our course participants

It has now been a little over three months since our (English) Fundamentals course went online and one week since the Spanish version was launched. We never expected to have 320 course participants in such a short period of time. It shows us how important and interesting it is for you to learn about integrating sports into Montessori. Thank you all! 

Currently 14 people have completed our course with success. Congratulations to them!

Lead Montessori Conference

Ruben Jongkind and Jip Bartels were invited to speak at the 2020 Lead Montessori Conference on November 12th. The conference was an online event on Zoom that addressed the current needs of the global Montessori community. With more than 70 speakers and over 90 hours of content, the conference was a big success.

During an interactive workshop, Ruben and Jip discussed the possibilities and benefits of integrating sports into the Montessori curriculum to 75 participants from all over the world. Of course, we also included physical activities to keep everybody’s brain and body in good shape!

Taking part in this Lead Montessori Conference did mean that due to different time zones, our man in Australia, Jip, presented the workshop from 2 to 4 AM local time in Melbourne. How about that for dedication! In the video above you see Jip doing a sports session via Zoom from his living room. 

All in all, it was a great experience and we received many enthusiastic responses from the participants in the workshop. Two of them are outlined below!

It is so satisfying to witness your incredible understanding of Montessori pedagogy in order to embrace this new way to approach sports. Thank you so much. You are so articulate!

Really great work. Thank you so much for helping us with what was feeling like a lack in our educational system.

Montessori México

Eder Cuevas, executive director of Montessori México and consultant for us, invited Ruben to give a presentation to the Latin American Montessori community that is connected to Montessori México. The reason for giving this presentation was to promote the launch of the Spanish version of the Montessori Sports Fundamentals course.

The presentation and following discussion was live on Facebook last week. Ruben explained the origins of Montessori Sports, how he came to understand the basic principles of Montessori's philosophy and how he started applying this at the youth academy of football club AFC Ajax in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Ruben talked about the spectacular development of the players leading them to the top of the world at very young ages. He also spoke about the different paradigms of youth sports.

Then, together with Eder, Ruben discussed how to apply Montessori principles to sports. An important point that came forward from the discussion with the audience was that the Montessori Sports programmes are suitable for Montessori guides from the first to the fourth plane of development. After answering a few more questions and receiving a lot of positive feedback, an hour had passed, and Eder closed the session. Only one week later the Facebook post had reached more than 4000 people!

As said before, already 30 Montessori teachers and parents subscribed to the Spanish version of the course. Schools in México, Argentina and the United States are also close to registering their teachers. The first steps are taken to help children, parents, teachers, and schools in Latin America to create child-friendly and productive sports environments in the Montessori world and beyond!

Sportkids

We are very happy to announce that during the Christmas holiday we will be doing sports activities with children again! In Edam-Volendam, just north of Amsterdam, we will organise two days of sports activities for children from 2 to 6.

Together with the municipality of Edam-Volendam, Montessori Sports developed the programme Sportkids. With Sportkids we aim to support children in developing their personality and improve their control of body and objects. Sportkids also gives the children the opportunity to find their interests. 

The programme is of course based on the Montessori philosophy. We will give the children freedom of choice and responsibility, so that they can find their own way towards independence. Keep an eye out for our social media channels to stay up to date!

Lastly, after three wonderful years in Australia, Jip is moving back to Amsterdam in the next couple of weeks. More about his experiences and future plans coming soon!