Hand of God: Building a Montessori Classroom

I work at Catholic Familyland in Ohio, where families come for a week-long summer family vacation, stay in cabins or tent camp, and have a retreat pilgrimage for the whole family. There is time to play in sports tournaments, participate in Eucharistic adoration and family rosaries, and listen to great speakers for the different age groups. I run the Children’s Ministry, which consists of 10 classrooms for the different kids ages 4-12. I coordinate the different religious orders that teach the catechesis lessons to the kids with the high school and college volunteers, the Alumni and Service Corps, assisting. One of the sisters approached me and said in her lesson she asked the children what peace is. He responded and said, “to be within God.” Let that sink in a bit. A wise kid. I think that’s the beauty of working with kids, they teach us more than we can teach them sometimes. They have this wonder and awe for life that’s inspiring.  

In our camp curriculum, I felt that the 4 and 5 year old program needed to be bulked up a bit. From my training in Catechesis of the Good Shepherd (CGS) and Montessori education, I knew of the potential of the 3-6 year old child to grow in their faith and have a personal relationship with God. This led me to implement in my second summer here, a Montessori classroom with elements of CGS. A local Montessori school was closing so I started there. I bought for a great price lots of works that began my stocking of Montessori items like the mats the kids would roll out, the Binomial cube, Trinomial cube, and many more Montessori things. The maintenance department was busy at work demolishing an old storage room full of shelves that I could use to be a new Montessori classroom. They were replacing the lights, installing carpeting, building walls to cover full tile kitchen walls, fixing the heater, plastering and painting walls, and much more I’m sure that I’m not even aware of.  

Next, I announced at an all staff meeting that I would be working on putting together this new Montessori room (with the help of many assistants). I mentioned what CGS is and how I would need to find little miniature priest vestments. I had been praying that morning about how I would want three little altars and three sets of vestments in this little room, since I had to adjust a traditional atrium to what we do at CFL with just one week and a lot of kids. So I made the announcement and after a Catholic Corps Woman (who also is the Sacristan) comes up to me and says she has a little vestment. I describe to her how I actually need it in four different colors for the Liturgical year. She says that’s what she has and I should come to the Sacristy and see them. Sure enough, she pulls out not one set but three sets of miniature Liturgical vestments. One set are mini priest vestments matching Fr. Kevin’s design and the other two sets are copes for the Infant of Prague statues. I am in shock, filled with joy, and know this project must be the work of Our Lady. I name the room “Mary’s Montessori.” 

Sure enough, I need something to display the Infant of Prague copes on and I find many give-away boxes outside my Sacred Heart building at work, which is the old seminary for the diocese for those who don’t know. I find a little Infant of Prague statue that needs a little paint and snag him. I find out that these boxes came from one of the Catholic Corps men and he tells me he has another Infant of Prague Statue I can have and the little crown for the other statue! The pieces just kept coming together for these copes and this room.  

Another super fun part of this project was contacting local woodworkers to make different pieces for me. I had my prior coworker make me three heavy duty miniature altars that are beautiful. I contacted another friend who works for the College of St. Joseph, the new college that opened locally that does woodworking. He made for me three beautiful miniature sacristy cabinets to go with the altars, with drawers for the altar cloths. He had his students make me two miniature wooden hanging closets and four wooden stands for the miniature priest vestments. We had a GAP guy who’s now at the College put a base on one of the Infant Statues and one of the missionaries repainted the Infant statue beautifully. My mom wanted to donate to this project and so she donated the altar kits with the miniature patens, chalices, candles, and crucifixes. I also needed three copes made to complete the Liturgical color sets so I sent her the measurements and she hand sewed those for me in green and red silk with white lace, to match the ones we had. 

I bought Montessori shelving from Amazon to fill the room (more helpers put these together) and little Montessori trays to fill the low shelving for the little kids. I was unsure if the room would be ready in time for the Summer, in regards to the room demo and getting the Montessori materials to fill about 65 trays. My youth team members were a huge help in organizing the works on shelves in the staging room until the room was ready. We had little chalk board works (the name for a Montessori job or activity on a tray), works for reading and math, for writing, for flower arranging (a favorite for boys and girls!), blocks, pouring, cutting, and so much more. Most were from the Montessori school or donated so not much was bought. I also found free online resources I laminated to make some more works.  

As the Holy Family Fests were fast approaching, I rummaged through the big attic over the Children’s Ministry building called Redeemer Hall. There I came to find many great Montessori items for my new classroom including: 

• Not just any bookshelf, but a Montessori bookshelf, where the covers of the books are displayed instead of the spine, for those early readers. (And I bought cute little kids’ rocking chairs to go with this in the reading corner.) 

• A huge wall mirror, which I labeled with the numbers 1-4 so kids could bless themselves with holy water in the right order, while looking at the mirror that is their size. 

• A tabernacle. Not a real tabernacle but I needed a mini model one, and so one of our SCRAs (the resident assistants for the summer) found this sick call kit hiding in the attic and it was the perfect fit. Fr. Kevin our chaplain gave me permission to use it, plus a whole box of cruets we needed as well. 

• A desk drawer. One of my favorite stories since one of 18 year old missionary male volunteers found this piece and refinished it to be the perfect piece to elevate my little tabernacle. I thought he was crazy but he had a vision for this little drawer! 

• Plus a prayer table, many more tables, a lamp, a Bible stand, cute cloths, and more which we needed and put to good use.  

  
  

I ran into one of our maintenance men, an older man who lives on property, down the hall from the Montessori room actually, and told him to keep an eye out for a holy water font for the room. He walked into his little studio, took the holy water font off the wall, and gave it to me. He even came back with a hammer and a nail and put it up. One more piece of the vision came together. I invited Fr. Kevin to bless the room and he wasn’t sure which blessing to do, but he ended up doing the blessing for a home. We pray this little room may be a home for the healing of many little children who will use it in the coming years. 

I gave tours to parents that first summer (2025) and many little kids benefited from the fruits of many people’s labors. I spoke with one dad of six kids on a fest who adopted his eight little nieces and nephews. He shared with me that that little 5 year old nephew of his that I saw in Mary’s Montessori had lost both his parents in a car crash. That little boy was tracing patens and chalices in my little classroom, busy at work. He shared how bringing those kids to CGS at their parish was the best thing they could do for the healing of these children. I couldn’t agree more.  

Just as the summer prior I asked my boss if I could build a Montessori room, part way through the launch summer, I asked my boss if I could get trained in the next step of level 2 of CGS for the older 6-9 year old child in this method, to start implementing this. He and the president approved. Right after this, I ran into a woman who said the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa’s order who require CGS training for all new sisters’ personal development, had some CGS stuff they wanted to get rid of. They dropped it off to my dad in California and sure enough it was a whole set of works for the level 2 classroom. And so this adventure continues of CGS level 2 being implemented for the Summer of 2026 at the Apostolate for Family Consecration in Bloomingdale, Ohio. Maybe level 3 (age 9-12) will be next! God is good.  

Thank you to my boss and the president of the AFC who allowed me to roll with this vision in this 50^th anniversary year, my coworkers and woodworkers who assisted me in putting this room together, my husband for his support, and Our Lady for making it all happen.  

I hope you enjoyed this little story of how Mary's Montessori came to be at the AFC.

All for... Jesus, through Mary, with St. Joseph. 

Here are some pictures from our room: