In this complimentary course, you’ll discover a step-by-step process for creating a full and satisfying life. Most importantly, you’ll learn how to identify what’s most important to you, visualize the future you desire, and create an action plan for creating your ideal Level 10 life. With Planning Your Best Life, you’ll discover: When you join Planning Your […]
Care of Community: Sowing the Seeds of Citizenship
Over the past few posts, we’ve been looking at the foundational lessons of practical life skills that are offered in a Montessori classroom for three-to-six-year-olds, but in reality these lessons should be offered in all classrooms and homes. The practical life skills of caring for oneself, caring for one’s environment, caring for others and caring […]
Care of Others: Another Step Towards Independence
As we consider the different areas of practical life exercises, we might see that care of others follows a natural expansion from the child’s activities in care for the self and care of the environment. Before we can truly take care of others, we need to know how to take care of ourselves, and at […]
Children’s Care of their Environment Creates Powerful Learning
One of the many universal learning and teaching principles used in Montessori education is the idea of the prepared environment. Created and maintained by the adults in that space, a prepared environment consists of four components: people, tools and objects, ideas and nature. What does a prepared environment look like? Let’s start with an example […]
Here’s My Letter Story
The importance of letter writing? In my life, letter writing may be the thing that made the difference. In 1971, for more than a year, and almost 200 letters, I corresponded with a young man I met briefly in Germany. What did we write about? Mainly, we wrote about the books we were reading and […]
Care of the Self is Where We Begin
One of the many things I have come to appreciate about my Montessori teaching experience is this idea; in their efforts to self-construct an adult human being, children’s initial work is care of the self. From this core work of care of the self, the child is drawn to other activities in caring for the […]
What is Kids Talk about?
The topics I write about meet at the intersection of parenting, teaching, leading and children. To thrive children need to be surrounded by enlightened adults. By that I mean adults who try to understand themselves, as well as children. As adults we should always be asking the big questions: When we can answer these questions, […]
I’m moving to Substack!
Kids Talk is moving to Substack! You may wonder—Why start on Substack, and why now? It’s time to do something different. Recently celebrating my 70th birthday, when I might be tempted to close up my laptop for good, I see children, and the folks who lead them, struggling with the basics of learning, and of […]
Childhood Potential Conference 2026
As the year slowly comes to a close, many of us begin to reflect. On what worked.On what felt heavy.And on what we wish to do differently as we step into a new year. If you’re anything like me, January doesn’t feel like a time for pressure or resolutions. It is more of a month […]
FREE TRAINING | Building Strong Family Relationships
What I have learned is that strong relationships that last a lifetime don’t just “happen”. Strong relationships require intentional work. If building relationships were easy, we’d have very few regrets in our lives. Building relationships is messy work. In this training, you’ll learn three ways to build strong relationships every day. You’ll also find out […]