It’s All About LOVE

In Montessori environments around the world, Grace and Courtesy Lessons are high priority in terms of importance. This is where we give lessons and teach about things like peace, love, kindness, service, helpfulness, respect and responsibility. These attributes truly form an important foundation for children. In honor of “Love Month,” we are sharing some of the books, printables and ideas that we use in our homes and at our school to help spread joy and happiness!

Simple Activities that spread Love!

Affirmations

• Have you ever noticed how important positive words are? Don’t they just fill your soul with joy? One simple way to bring out joy is by taking a moment each day to tell yourself something good about yourself or something good you want to become. These words and phrases are called positive affirmations. I actually have positive affirmations that come to my phone several times a day.  It’s a free trial app called “I Am”. I love it!
• You can state positive affirmations to yourself or write little sticky notes of affirmations and place them around your house or classroom. Things like,

“I am Happy, I am healthy, I am loved, I am kind, I am helpful, I am safe, I am learning everyday, I am grateful,” etc.

If you really want to take this to another level, write a list of “I Am” statements and read them everyday! See how that helps to spread love! :)

• Do this with your children too! Help them come up with their own “I Am” statements and you can write them down for them. Or you can grab our Affirmation cards here and read one or several with your child every day! They will feel special!

Kindness

• Find little ways to serve others each day. These don’t have to be huge acts of kindness, just simple things like…
• • Holding the door for someone
  • Helping someone with loading their groceries putting your cart back
  • Smiling at everyone, (if you are wearing a mask, squinting will do😂)
  • Being patient in long lines
  • Greeting tellers and workers with enthusiasm even when you are in a hurry!

These small acts of kindness will yield huge results. Being an example of a person who spreads kindness will not go unnoticed by your children. They will see you doing it and will grow up to be people who do the same!

“Let us treat them (children), therefore, with all the kindness which we would wish to help to develop in them.” – Maria Montessori

• I found these Kindness cards at Target a few years ago. They are great to use like affirmation cards and the best part….I saw them there recently.

Love Notes

• When our children were little, we started “Love Notes” during the month of February. We would decorate paper bags or little mailboxes and keep these in our dining room along with cut out paper hearts and pens. Everyday starting at the end of January, we would write a “love note” to every person in our family and slip it in their mailbox. Sometimes our kids would do way more than one per day so our mailboxes would be filled to the brim.❤️❤️❤️ On Valentine’s Day, we would serve our dinner on china and sip martinellis from the flute glasses we got from our wedding . We would decorate the table with all things hearts and we even brought out the candles! Our children always looked forward to our family Valentine’s Party where we would open our mailboxes and read our notes out loud. I think this helped to build connections of love between our five children. In the least, it was a super fun and sweet activity!
• I found these “love note” mailboxes at target in the $ section. At only $3 a piece, it’s a steal of a deal. Then, all you need are hand cut hearts from construction paper and some pens. Easy peasy activity!

Words of Love

• Do you know how powerful your words are? We can use our words to uplift, encourage and inspire or we can use our words to hurt, deflate and shut others down. Of course we want to use our words for good, an easy way to do that is by sharing words of encouragement, expressing our gratitude, and spreading sunshine with the things we choose to say!
  • Do you want to lift and build your students and your children every day? Here’s a super easy way to spread that sunshine! Find time to say 5 things to those you love and teach everyday.
    • You are valued
    • You are loved
    • You are safe
    • You are appreciated
    • You are kind

Love Books

• What better way to say I love you than reading books about love with your children? First, you are taking time to be with them. Second, you are sharing a powerful message about how you feel about them. We have a few sweet Valentine books that we love (here are some of our favorites) But one idea we love is writing your own Love Book for your child or students. This is kind of like the “Love Notes” we mentioned before but lengthier and a little more time consuming.
  • You can put a quick book together with copy paper and colored cardstock or get creative and use colorful crafting paper. Or use our heart printables found here. Write a story of love for your child, it doesn’t have to be brilliant, it doesn’t have to rhyme, it doesn’t even need to be long just tell your story of the love that you feel for them.
  • Add some illustrations or you can grab some photos from the internet, wrap it up and give it as a gift to your child or students. Ask them, “Would you like me to read this to you?” I promise, they will! :) Watch as they melt into the understanding that this was made for them! Such a sweet experience!

Happy Heart Month! We are excited to hear how you celebrate all the beautiful attributes of love in your homes and classrooms! See below for a list of a few things we mentioned above!

With Love,

Barbara, Rachel and Kayla