Multilingual Montessori

In this episode, I speak with Merila, a mom of two who first learned about Montessori when she sent her older son to a Montessori school when he was 22 months old. Her boys are now 6 and 2.5, and we chat about the joys and challenges of parenting from a Montessori perspective, and how Merila went from thinking Montessori sounded kind of cultish to being, as she puts it, a “hardcore” Montessori mom.

I was particularly interested in interviewing Merila because she and her husband are both monolingual parents, born in the United States, but they made the decision to introduce a second language to their boys, and now Merila is learning Mandarin along with her sons. We talk about how this idea came about and strategies she is using to help support the boys’ language acquisition in a language she herself isn’t fluent in.

We also had a wonderful and unexpected discussion about the connection between music and language, which, as a musician and a language enthusiast, I particularly loved!

Follow Multilingual Montessori:

In this episode, I speak with Chelsea Daniel, an AMI Montessori guide and certified yoga instructor living in Brooklyn, NY. Chelsea is the founder of Chickadee Yoga, where she teaches children's yoga, prenatal yoga, and postnatal/baby + me yoga classes. We discuss the intersection of mindfulness and Montessori, how to use mindfulness to support children, and how we as adults can use mindfulness practices to be our best selves when caring for children. We also chat about Chelsea's experience living in Austria for several years as a young child and learning to speak German there. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Chelsea!  

Follow Chickadee Yoga: 

Follow Multilingual Montessori:

In this episode I speak with Jinny Gonzalez, an AMI-certified 0-6 Montessori guide and the Director of Early Childhood at Austin Montessori School in Austin, Texas. Jinny is originally from Puerto Rico and is a mom to three boys, and she has been working in Montessori for 22 years. In this conversation, we chat about Jinny’s experiences teaching in a dual language immersion Montessori classroom, her experiences raising bilingual children, and advice she gives to teachers and parents about supporting young children’s language development. Jinny is a walking encyclopedia of Montessori information - I hope you enjoy this conversation!

Follow Multilingual Montessori:

Welcome to the first episode of the Multilingual Montessori podcast! On this episode, I speak with Tais Zeitune, a Brazilian mother and Montessorian living in London with her Irish husband Will and their two-year-old son Luca. In this conversation, we discuss what first drew Tais to Montessori, how Montessori philosophies have influenced her parenting style, her experiences teaching in a montessori children’s house, and the role that bilingualism plays in her family’s daily routine. Tais has wonderful insights about Montessori and bilingual parenting - I hope you enjoy this conversation!

Welcome to Multilingual Montessori, a podcast where we’ll discuss multilingualism, multiculturalism, and raising children from a Montessori perspective.

I’m Gabrielle Kotkov, an AMI Montessori guide and certified TESOL instructor with a Masters in Child Studies, and I’m the founder of the Multilingual Montessori website and Instagram account. In this podcast, I’ll be interviewing parents who are raising multilingual children, Montessori guides who have taught in bilingual classrooms or who are themselves multilingual, and adults who grew up speaking two or more languages. We’ll talk about the intersection between language and identity, how to find balance when speaking two or more languages in a monolingual environment, and all the joys and challenges that we experience along the way.

Thanks for joining me on this Multilingual Montessori journey - and stay tuned for more episodes!