LE JOURNAL DE COCLICO
News from passionate Parents & Preneurs
What impact does COCLICO furniture have on your children’s development?
Montessori pedagogy is both a teaching method and a way of life that is designed to encourage (quietly and while observing) children to discover and develop their independence. One of the most important “tools” or materials to achieve this is the use of Montessori-inspired furniture. In this blog post, we’ll explore how Montessori-inspired furniture can help children develop self-reliance and empowerment.
In the Montessori furnishings, the furniture is designed to be accessible to children of all ages and sizes. This means that they can easily access the furniture, use it, and put it away when it’s done. This furniture is also designed to be simple and straightforward. There are no unnecessary bells and whistles, no complicated instructions, and no confusing features. Instead, they are intuitive to use, so children can figure out how to use them for themselves.
What exactly do our children learn with such furniture?
COCLICO & the prepared environment
The “fine” frame
In the last post I told you about the “rough” framework of what you can change at home so that the environment is not only designed according to our taste and our needs (and then we wriggle that the children do not participate as they otherwise could), but also according to the needs of the children.
Coarse and fine, yes, almost sounds like the sausage, but it’s not, by that I mean on the whole and in detail.
But now what do I mean by “fine” or details: What and how can we offer our children possible activities?
COCLICO & the prepared environment
The “rough” framework
In my workshops together with (and for) parents (grandparents, aunts, uncles and many more) I like to take you on a little hike. There is a station “the prepared environment”. I will talk to you and share with you inspirations for home. For what? To give your children and grandchildren the opportunity to pursue their needs of independence (“I do it alone”) and connectedness (together with you but also in everyday life).
What? How? Wherewith?
COCLICO & the primal needs of the child
COCLICO, Montessori and how it all began
It all started with a conversation with my new work colleague when we talked about everything possible in my first week of my first job after university. About our world views, our origins, our attitude to life. I was 24 years old at the time. At some point, my new colleague asked me: “Elise, what if the norm is not the norm at all. That what society pretends to be “normal” does not have to be. What if we could define our own norm?”
So we talked about our childhood, our upbringings and plans when we become mothers. For the first time I heard the term Montessori education.
Mindful sitting or a little exercise for every day
As Astrid Lindgren writes: “and then you have to have the time to just sit there and look in front of you”
Take the time (have to!?!) and just sit there. And what.. Don’t do anything? yes. Nothing. BEING and not DOING or HAVING. No, no. Just BE there… and breathe.
In all the workshops, whether with students, with teachers or even with adults, we practice together what “mindful (and healthy) sitting” is. Because we sit so long during the day, it’s one of the first exercises. And we are repeating them. Because as Maria Montessori has observed and as brain research also proves: the repetition of an exercise, an activity and a movement, causes a stronger formation of synapses in the brain and these are stored. What happens? that this new exercise will eventually become a matter of course through repetition, such as learning to ride a bicycle.
What we pay attention to together when sitting mindfully is:
“And then you have to have the time to just sit there and look in front of you,” Astrid Lindgren
Just sitting there is not always easy. What I discuss with the kids & young people again and again when I come to schools or sports clubs is how our sitting posture changes as we grow up. The more we go up (actually grow), the more we sit crooked, almost as if we were shrinking, at least we do it to our back. The Kids & Teens spend so much time at school sitting.
Among other things, I ask them if they remember how they sat in kindergarten as a toddler, for example. The answer is usually the same: “Yes! I sat down so that my feet touch the ground.”
We’re back… We were never really gone.
Hey! There we are again.
The photo speaks for itself: let’s go or stay #shouldistayorshouldigo
The last 3 months we have taken a social media break. 3 months after which the focus was not on social media, but on other projects. So we’re still there. We stay and so do our products .
We have actually expanded. Not with new products but with new workshops. We want to share our vision in other ways.
“What is Montessori in your furniture?”
I was the last week in Paris. More exactly I was in Villepinte for exhibiting at the Trade Show Maison & Objet. We were placed at the Hall “KIDS & FAMILY”, from the topic we thought it fits perfectly to our furniture and our philosophy.
Understandably lots of visitors asked us “What is Montessori in your furniture?”. Since several years there is a Montessori trend in France, where you can find lots of books or different activity boxes with Montessori materials. Montessori is very present in the stores and librairies. Some parents are thankful, others may be… I would say “saturated” from all the Montessori omnipresence on the market.
Therefore, I understand the questions regarding our brand.
This is what I always say: we have a vision at COCLICO which says that the child has his/her place everywhere. As Montessori says: the environment must adapt to the child, not the child to the environment.
So, let’s re-think the way we live together…