Monday, June 3, 2013

"Tea"

It's easy to make fun of Montessori schools.  In fact, the Onion did a really good job of it here.  I'm always on the lookout for a joke and I sure don't want to have to work hard for it, so Finn's Montessori enrollment has been a boon for me.

It should be noted, however, that not working hard is hard for a Montessori parent, what with all of the requests to "participate" in my son's education and "contribute" to the Montessori community.  Hippies.  You want me to come in and "read to the kids"?  How about you start stocking booze and we'll see what happens.

But I digress.  The Montessori method is all about self-guided learning and cultivating creativity through a relatively unstructured environment.  Now that we're wrapping up Finn's first year there, I can safely say that they have cultivated the crap out of Finn's natural ability to come home and beg to play Angry Birds.

To celebrate such accomplishments, they wrap up the year with a big "Parent Tea", where all of the parents come in to the classroom to be served refreshments by the kids.  Aside from the fact that there was exactly zero tea anywhere on the premises (don't hold me down with your truth-in-advertising rules, man!), the event was undeniably awesome.  Finn seated us, eagerly showed us the place settings that he had made, including a bowl made entirely of chocolate (!!!), and then sat down and stared blankly at us while we wondered whether we were actually going to be served anything other than a smile.  A quick "Dude, who's supposed to bring us those cookies over there?" later and we were enjoying a very classy snack with our little gentleman.

Of course, here's our little gentleman just 24 hours later, army crawling through an enormous mud puddle.  Full clothed.  In the same shirt he was wearing for the Tea.

I believe at Montessori, they call this "Aquatic Studies".


No comments: