Our Story
Hand In Hand Christian Montessori was founded in 1999 as a summer camp with a handful of families. Now, our Christian Montessori program is one of the largest in the country with hundreds of active learners on three campuses.
Our History
It seems like yesterday…spring 1996. I was holding my baby, dreaming about my life with my husband and this child, wanting to raise him to be a Child of God, a child with light. Then, I remember having a distinct impression from God with three simple words: Home School Academy. Interesting! Was that an oxymoron? Did something like that already exist? Little did I know that these three words would change my thinking, my ideas about the ideal educational experience and my future…
Why Choose Hand In Hand?
“Why Montessori” from a Lifetime Educator – Marlene C. Testa Lee (1939-2021)
Founder of our CMFE and Music Programs
I am the youngest child raised in a family of eleven, by emigrant parents from Italy who understood the value of the opportunity of education in this country and the value of the home environment. They provided fertile ground for me in my quest for my life’s message. As a wife and mother of two grown married children, and six grandchildren, I have had many opportunities to observe children on a daily basis. I have taught in both public and private schools, religious and non-sectarian schools. I have dedicated my life to instilling a love for music, learning and life in all that call me “teacher.” My experiences in teaching for over fifty years range from parents and their newborns to sophisticated college students…
Our History
It seems like yesterday…spring 1996. I was holding my baby, dreaming about my life with my husband and this child, wanting to raise him to be a Child of God, a child with light. Then, I remember having a distinct impression from God with three simple words: Home School Academy. Interesting! Was that an oxymoron? Did something like that already exist? Little did I know that these three words would change my thinking, my ideas about the ideal educational experience and my future.
The quest to start a “Home School Academy” for my own children took me to many places, engaged in many conversations, asking many questions and meeting others who share common values. Several concepts and proposals were made, but in the end, a Christian Montessori model along with a partnership with parents was determined to be the ideal. Several years of work and many hurdles happened as we dared to dream and forged a new hybrid in education.
But my journey and introduction to Montessori actually occurred in 1992 in Seattle, Washington, USA as I observed, for the first time, along with my mother, Mrs. Lee, a Montessori-inspired music class with Audrey Sillick and Lorna Lutz Heyge. This training led Mrs. Lee and I to begin a college-lab-program for a community music program called KinderStudio of Musik on the campuses of Bethel University (1992-1993) and University of Northwestern- St. Paul (1993-2007).
The summers of 1999 and 2000 saw the first implementation of the “home-school academy” vision during a two-week Summer Camp thanks to the leadership and hosting of North Heights Lutheran Church. We had a few teachers, a few dozen students, their willing parents, and an attitude of “let’s try and see what happens!”
The fall of 2000 and 2001 we started our Family Preschool and Family Musik Programs (ages 0-3), an ECFE format, with parent and child interaction and a Montessori-appetizer. In 2002 we finally launched our first Children’s House (ages 3-6) along with our first part-time, Home School Academy (ages 6-12). 2007 brought a change, when we became our own 501c3 non-profit corporation.
In 2008, we moved into our own dedicated educational wing in partnership with the Church of Corpus Christi and continued to grow. That fall we also launched our Junior HIgH Program (ages 12-15) which nurtures adolescents and raises leaders. The fall of 2010 we significantly changed programming as we added the Private Academy (ages 6-15) for those families who desire Christian Montessori for a full school year.
In 2015 we added a second campus in Bloomington that not only housed our Children’s House and Elementary Homeschool and Private Academy (ages 3-12), but our MACTE accredited Christian Montessori Training Center (CMTC) as well. The birth of the “The Crayon Box” blog, occurred that year, inspiring conversations about Christ, children and constructivism.
The journey continued, and in 2018 we outgrew our current location in Roseville, and it became critical for our school’s survival to find a permanent home. Through a series of miraculous events, we purchased a vacant and vandalized US Military Armory and began rebuilding and restoring it. We opened our doors in September 2020 and launched a new Infant and Toddler environment called the NIDO (means nest in Italian) for 0–3-year-olds, and in 2023 we will enjoy a fully-restored building housing our Central Headquarters, Welcome Center, and soon – state-of-the-art Assembly Performance Hall.
In 2021 we added our third campus in Wayzata, and in 2023 moved into the historic Highcroft Country Day School site as our new permanent home for infants through adolescents. Over 320 learners will one day enjoy our Collaborative, Constructivist, Christian Montessori Community on the west side. This architecturally acclaimed building has a gymnasium, dining hall, fine arts center, STEM rooms, creative classrooms and glorious circular skylights pointing towards the heavens and God – the only source of love and truth.
Today, we have grown to be one of the largest Christian Montessori communities with over 600 students and 150 faculty and staff on three campuses. We are committed to the original vision of “Authentic Christian Montessori with a strong Parent Partnership.” We continue to look for new ideas of development and application as we seek to share this unique educational model with as many children and parents as possible, advancing the Kingdom of God through Christian Montessori.
I give God all the glory for the idea of Hand in Hand, a name God also dropped in my heart long ago. The journey and the fruition of bringing the Hand in Hand families together has been serendipitous. Surely the theme verse of Hand in Hand, “to write the truths of God’s Word and truths about God’s world on the hands and hearts of our children as we walk, talk, rise up and lie down,” based on the call in Deuteronomy 11:9, has been our purpose throughout the years.
In 1910, Dr. Maria Montessori dedicated herself to the work with young children and said, “I offer myself as a [sacrifice] to Jesus Christ, our Lord, desiring to follow the path of his divine will.” E.M. Standings, her close friend and confidant challenged: “those who have read [this vow] and appreciate its contents would join in praying for the intention that Almighty God, in his love and wisdom, would raise up some individual or group of individuals, who under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, would found such an order – which would in fact be…the Children of Light.”
We have felt this inspiration and call it Hand in Hand and pray it does serve as a model for others as well.
–Michelle Lee Thompson
Founding Parent, Executive Director and Head of School
History of Our Curriculum
Dr. Maria Montessori was one of the first female doctors in Italy. Although misunderstood by her contemporaries and some today, she was a pioneer in her thoughts and actions toward children. She did not work with the elite, as many people think, but the disadvantaged, the mentally and physically challenged, and the poor. She brought her theories of sensorial learning to life and began to give children tools that would expedite and facilitate their love for learning. She was the first to create child-sized everything; instead of mini-adults, she respected children as children. She frequently used the phrase “a place for everything and everything in its place” as she recognized the child’s need for organization.
She further observed that children are different from each other and need to learn at their own pace and at a time of readiness. The first six years are the most sensitive and critical period of the child’s life. The child has the unique ability (one that is lost in adulthood) to absorb everything in their environment in an intuitive way. Dr, Montessori developed what she called the “prepared environment,” which has a certain order and allows children to develop at their own pace, according to their own capabilities, in a noncompetitive atmosphere. She said, “never let a child risk failure until he has a reasonable chance of success.” She also observed that children have an innate love and need for purposeful activities. The child receives pleasure in the “doing,” not just in the profit and completion of the task, as adults do. Specially trained adults referred to as “guides” inspire “learners” to become respectful, responsible and resourceful.
The Montessori philosophy of education is that every child carries within themselves the person that they will become. To develop their physical, intellectual, emotional, linguistical and social and spiritual capacity that must have freedom—a freedom that is achieved through order and self-discipline, a freedom not to do what you want but to do what is right. A child’s world is full of sights and sounds that appear chaotic, and in this chaos, they must create order, thus learning to master themselves in the world in which they live.
In each of our special prepared environments designed for three-year age spans, there are materials on the shelves grouped by subjects or key curriculum components. The shelves “read” from left to right, top to bottom, so children would be aware of a progression from easiest to most difficult. Children can only touch a material if they have been shown the “lesson” as a measure of control and order in the classroom. More than that, children desire repetition and become familiar with the work. Learners need to demonstrate 90% competency before advancing to the next materials. There are special materials designed to teach all aspects of faith, math, sensorial/geometry, language, science, history, geography, practical life, grace and courtesy, and peace education. There are special areas for our materials of faith called “The Atrium.”
Dr. Montessori used the term “Atrium,” derived from the gathering place for worship in the early Christian church, to describe the spiritual environment that is carefully set up and prepared for the children to proclaim the message of Jesus, teach the lessons Jesus taught, and focus on the Word and worship. Each of our three classrooms houses an altar, religious work, and biblical lessons through which the children can express their faith in Christ.
“The Montessori Method was furnished with a long-sought opportunity of penetrating deeper in the life of the child’s soul, and of thus fulfilling it’s true educational mission.”—E.M. Standing
Why Montessori
I am the youngest child raised in a family of eleven, by emigrant parents from Italy who understood the value of the opportunity of education in this country and the value of the home environment. They provided fertile ground for me in my quest for my life’s message. As a wife and mother of two grown married children, and six grandchildren, I have had many opportunities to observe children on a daily basis. I have taught in both public and private schools, religious and non-sectarian schools. I have dedicated my life to instilling a love for music, learning and life in all that call me “teacher.” My experiences in teaching for over fifty years range from parents and their newborns to sophisticated college students.
Over the last 25 years, I have become aware of a different approach to teaching children. Instead of teacher dictation, it is child participation. Instead of group lectures, it is individual learning. Instead of theory and abstract, it is concrete and tangible. And everything is in the hands of the child. Instead of “sit down and be quiet,” it is “let’s move and sing!” As a music educator, I knew what a change in my style of teaching meant to my music classes. My students retained more! They came to class expecting something wonderful to happen and left with joy! We begin to see measurable results with even our youngest of children.
Then, I began to think—what if we adapted these changes to the conventional classroom with reading, writing and arithmetic as well? In my past experiences it was all about the teacher. In the environment I have now chosen to work in, it is all about the child. There is a difference! I have often wondered, if we could enhance the learning potential of children in some way, what would it be? What makes the difference for children in education? When the child is grown, what will be the deciding factor of “success” within their childhood? How do children learn? The learning environment is comparable to the soil, water and sun the surround a tiny seed. The health of the plant completely depends on the health of its environment. So, it is with children! It seems that our society says “parents make the difference”—yet our state funding, mandates of school learning, parenting policies, attitudes and actions communicate quite the opposite.
Children need time—time with their parents and time to grow. Values are caught, not taught. Parents who invest in actively teaching their children about life receive an abundance in the return of their investment in the character qualities of their children. Independent practice, repetition and individual choice should constitute the majority of the time spent in education. It allows children to understand the problems, correct their own mistakes, and in general, spend time concentrating and thinking. This is an apprenticeship for adulthood.
In the beginning, when God created the world, He created everything that existed. Then He created humans with one distinct difference—in His image with the ability to think and reason not just react. Thinking and choosing is the deciding difference in those who succeed. The Bible states in Proverbs: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” If it is the ability to think using our maximum potential—the authority of God and His viewpoint of life and learning must be in the forefront of our children’s minds. God expressed to His people in Deuteronomy: “Teach your children, while you walk with them, talk with them, rise with them. Write it on their hands, inscribe it on their hearts.” So now we know it and believe it. We must take the challenge to make it happen. We must embrace our God-given responsibility to raise our children and teach them to think for Christ and His Kingdom. We do believe that all of life is better Hand in Hand, as parent to child, parent to teacher, teacher to child, child to child, parent to parent, and all to God.
Marlene C. Testa Lee (1939-2021)
Founder of our CMFE and Music Programs