I want to thank everyone who was able to attend the 2021 Celebrating Our Montessori Children’s conference! Thank you to UWLX for hosting and being so thoughtful and generous with your time. I feel the presentation went off without a hitch when technology usually throws a monkey wrench in somewhere. For those of you who wanted to have attended, but could not, I am posting screenshots of the slides in gallery format with notes. Not the same as being there live, but hopefully you will glean some new information and will find this summary of my presentation helpful.

These were introduction slides going over my educational and professional background. You can can get further details on the website if you click on this link.

Slide seven had some details from research done by the CDC, which found dramatic positive correlations between physical activity done in school and school performance, with virtually no downside. Slide nine laid out the two most common scenarios that I encounter when I talk to people about their physical education program in a Montessori school. One scenario is the Montessori certified teacher with no PE experience, and the other is the PE instructor without any Montessori training. If you happen to be Montessori trained, as well as have a background in physical education (like myself), consider yourself a unicorn and your school is lucky to have you. Slide eleven talks about the general method of Montessori Physical Education:

Align - align the PE curriculum with the classroom curriculum

Combine - Create PE games that have familiar rule sets and game dynamics with new game mechanics that teach and reinforce concepts from the classroom.

Play and Discuss - After playing the game, discuss the concepts of the game and how they relate to what they are learning in the classroom. Discuss the symbols, colors, physical movements, and gameplay to help the students better understand their classroom lesson(s).

Slides seventeen and eighteen presents data which shows that students who had integrated PE lessons did better on a simple memory test of the planets of the solar system than the control group. The improvements were dramatic for the first and second graders.

Slide sixteen introduces big fairs as a great way to incorporate STEM and culture into physical education. The three most common fair types are science fair, culture fair, and engineering fairs.

Slide eighteen shows the scientific method, which is the critical information that we want to reinforce in our PE activities when the students are doing the science fair.

Slide nineteen details how we connect our science fair to our Montessori PE class by doing active human body experiments. By doing experiments that test things like power output, exercise and heart rate, music and performance, etc., we reinforce concepts like hypothesis, controls, independant and dependant variables, data, and conclusions by going step-by-step through an experiment in PE. The experiments themselves are active, so the students are getting exercise as well as studying the scientific method. By going through the steps of the scientific method with each experiment, by science fair presentation time, they are more than ready to present their own science fair project because they have done six to eight other (human body PE) experiments. If you are interested in these lessons, they are bundled together as the Human Body Experiments Lesson Collection. You can also find the entirety of this collection, plus other great lessons, in Volume 2.

Slides twenty-one through twenty-three discuss culture fairs and how to incorporate them into PE. During a standard culture fair, students investigate a civilization from the past, or a modern country. By analyzing traditional sports of a culture, one can learn a tremendous amount of information. If we use the lens of human fundamental needs, sport usually integrates with aspects of clothing, food, transportation, defense, vanity, music, and religion. There may be special uniforms or costumes that are worn for the sport. Foods and celebrations could be associated with the sport. Animal or motor power could be a component of the sport, which suggests that they also serve as a form of transportation. A sport may have been a training game for the military to hone their skills. There may have been special decoration or tattoos. Specific music may be played before, during, or after, the sport, including national anthems. Many sports also coincide with religious holidays or festivals. We can also learn details about the geography, flora, and fauna of their environment through sport. Oceanside sports like surfing would happen on an island or coastal areas, while skiing sports would happen in cold mountainous regions. Materials used to make traditional equipment for the sport would reveal what plants, animals, and minerals the people had access. Finally, sport gives us an insight into what a society deems important in their culture. For example, lacrosse, a favorite game of the Native Americans, is a team based game used to mimic and take the place of war (often called the Little Brother of War). To be successful, a team must work together the way a tribe must work together. Careful consideration was taken into making their playing equipment, and that craftsmanship was also valued in the tools and shelter built for everyday life. Conversely, Senegalese wrestling is a one-on-one sport, where individual power and strength are deemed to be the most important aspects of a great person and leader. You can find many of my indigenous sport write-ups in Volume 3 as well as my TpT store.

Slides twenty-five and twenty-six go into the PE classroom integration of Engineering or Inventors Fairs. Similar to the Science Fair, the hallmark concept that needs to be reinforced in PE is the Engineering process. It is similar to the scientific method, but it is different enough that it merits its own study. The best way to tie engineering and inventions into PE is to have the students invent their own sport using the engineering process. I have a detailed write-up called the Invent a Sport Lesson Series, which can also be found in Volume 3.

Slide twenty-seven explains that many schools do a Field Day, which usually is an excuse to go outside, play, and take advantage of the good weather before summer break. I suggest that this would be a perfect time for the older students to teach and facilitate their invented sport(s) to younger students, which would be a great way to promote across-age camaraderie and school spirit, which ultimately builds community.

Slide twenty-nine showed the audience where they can go to get free lesson write-ups for At-home PE games, Social Distanced variations of my games for school, and free downloadable lesson plans. If you are new to the blog, click on this link here to go straight to the free content. I explained that with the tremendous adversity we as educators have gone through, I wanted to help by providing as much helpful free content as I could. Hopefully this helps you too.

The last couple slides included my contact info (which you can find links to at the bottom of the web page), as well a big thank for the attendees. So, if you made it all the way through this blog post, then I owe you a big thank you as well. Thank you for caring about my passion, which is making purposeful Montessori physical education through integration of the classroom curriculum.