BW’s mom tried, and managed, to keep a straight face two days ago at the College of Charleston Biology Lecture. She was sitting near BW and glanced across the aisle to see BW’s note taking paper. This is what was written across the top:
Sexy Legs!
But that got us to talking about the lack of shock factor that reproduction has in many Montessori classrooms. Dr. Montessori encouraged guides to not avoid topics but to address them when the child is interested. It is not uncommon for toddler and casa children to be working out breast feeding questions and they are handled factually. Something along the lines of: “One of the characteristics of mammals is that they feed their young milk. Female mammals have mammary glands that are designed to produce milk to help their babies grow up strong. Isn’t it wonderful that your mommy can do that for your little brother. How do baby birds get fed by their mommy?”
Reproduction is handled when the child is wondering. It doesn’t come up often. But when it does, it usually begins with a lower order animal – like frogs. BW had just done a little project on the jellyfish and become familiar with the idea of egg and sperm from the lifecycle of the jellyfish. (He didn’t seem to need to know male = sperm and female = egg just that larva followed.) So when we were prepping to go to the biology lecture, I discussed the characteristics of amphibian eggs.
I posed the next question: “If eggs must be kept moist or wet at all times, where do you think the eggs are laid?” Then I followed it up with the idea that the frogs eggs aren’t lain like chicken eggs. The female squirts out eggs and the male fertilizes the eggs. (If it comes up again I’ll add the term gametes.) To do this with the highest chance of success, the male climbs on the back of the female. Then we discussed a friend of our families whose son was able to get the frogs to mount his hands because the frog can’t see very well in the dark. We had a good laugh at that. We had the basics for this lecture covered. Not too bad. Not tense, highly technical, complete, or embarrassing.
Frog sex wasn’t something to be avoided. The kids weren’t too young. It is nature, and as such it must be discussed, and discussed as Montessorians do with fact and information in small doses. It does concern me that because children don’t get to spend “board time” outside as much as previous generations, the children don’t get to see animal sex and all sex becomes taboo and giggly. I think AV and JV learned a lot from the anole behavior when they were little – how legs amphibians walk and gallop, how they can wait sooooo long perfectly still, how birds will grab them right off the pavement, how they reproduce and what happens if green anoles and brown lizards mate, and the list goes on. They can apply their four-year-old observations to so many areas of biology today.
The Inclusive Atrium 