Dear parent, 

Yes, I'm very interested in the interconnectivity of living and nonliving things! Cosmic Education (my plan for the Elementary curriculum) is all about how things interrelate! The crowning lesson is called “The Chart of Interdependencies” and is all about how living and nonliving entities depend on one another to continue existing.  I observed that animals do not eat merely to satisfy themselves but to fulfill a mission prescribed to them by their behavior, in the interests of the harmony of creation, which is achieved by the collaboration of all beings, animate and inanimate. This gets into my notion of the “Cosmic Task”, which is that every living and nonliving entity has a role to play in the interconnectedness of creation. 

In my life, I was also very interested in human interdependence and I thought it was very important for children to learn about things such as money and trade. In fact, there is a whole area of lessons in Elementary about  interdependencies of people and of service. No one is self-sufficient. For the satisfaction of our needs, we have to depend on the work of many people. This topic begins early on with lessons on how many people it takes for food and clothing to reach us in a shop. The end of the series of lessons is probably given sometime in Upper Elementary, and it’s about money and taxation. There are also lessons about international trade and economic geography. 

Read more about these lessons on these two blogs: 

https://margaretwhitley.com/2020/04/19/montessori-lessons-in-interdependence-greater-relevance-than-ever/ margaretwhitley.com/montessori-lessons-in-interdependence-greater-relevance-than-ever

https://www.trilliummontessori.org/montessori-interdependence-relevance/?fbclid=IwAR3bA_yeg54eFeoX7cBnuNR2GhOvpF50rHIHN2ZlmqUUwbslHPQtm_N9-9I trilliummontessori.org/montessori-interdependence-relevance