Carol Palmer
A Montessori Teacher on a Mission
I’m Carol, I am an AMI trained 9-12 teacher at Wa Ora Montessori School in New Zealand as well as an enthusiastic craftsperson, president of my local fibre-craft guild, wife, and mother of two wonderful children. I am absolutely, (obsessively) passionate about the importance of Handwork in education.
Have a read here, for an explanation of why Handwork is so important – but for now, please believe me that it is.
It is so important, and so overlooked that I have spent years researching, writing, testing and re-writing a comprehensive set of lessons to help teachers include handwork in their curriculum. In Montessori we call these sets of lessons ‘Albums’ – a complete curriculum that will keep children engaged and challenged from the age of six to the age of twelve. All trained Montessori teachers have Albums for every curriculum area from Language to Maths, to Biology.
What they don’t have is a Handwork Album. Montessori teachers are not trained to teach handwork which means many of them do not teach it. But, they do understand how important it is, and many of them would love to teach it, if only they knew where to start.
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This is where, I hope, I come in. I have created the first Montessori Handwork Album – The Work of Wool – available here. Of course there are far more areas of handwork than wool alone and I plan to write further Albums to help with these in the future.
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During the process of writing the Album, I have connected with so many interesting, dedicated, supportive and wonderful people who are all, in some way, interested in Handwork that I wanted to grow that connection and this blog is my way of doing that. Every two weeks l post about Montessori, Handwork, Album writing or anything else that seems relevant and interesting. Sometimes I will post lessons I hope you can use, sometimes stories to share with your students.
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I hope you will share my journey, try my lessons and tell me how you get on, share your joy and your frustrations and of course offer me advice. Let’s start a Montessori Handwork Community and learn from each other.
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If you would like to give me your email address, I’ll let you know when I have written a new post and sometimes I’ll send you extra bits and bobs I promise I won’t spam you – our inboxes are already cluttered enough.