Shoreline's Happy Valley Montessori Serves Children, Parents

Maria Towle, a bubbly, energetic woman, moves from room to room helping children pick out just the right color crayon.  One little girl asks if apples are yellow or green. Another wants to know if he can color his apples purple. Towle answers their questions clearly and kindly as they work away on their coloring books.

Towle owns and runs Happy Valley Montessori School in Shoreline.

“It’s just me here. I like to keep the classrooms small,” she said.

Towle follows the teaching of Maria Montessori whose philosophy of education is based on the individual child, allowing him or her to develop at their own pace in a non-competitive environment.

In the light of Maria Montessori, Towle encourages her children to work freely at their own pace. Not all the kids have to color in the apples at the same time, but they are given the task to work on their coloring book. Towle reads the book to one of her students, while another works on coloring in all the pictures and another thumbs through the different color options asking Towle to read to her the names of each crayon color.

The small size of Towle’s classes adds to the overall feeling of comfort and give it a homey feel. The school used to be her own house but now has been completely converted over to her school, which she has been running for nine years. Her classes are for children 2 ½ years old, potty trained, to 6 years old, pre-kindergarten.  She allows a maximum of 8 kids and this year she’s almost full with just two openings.

Within the home like setting the younger children to work with the older, side by side. Towle hopes that mixing the ages creates a sense of community where the younger children learn from the older and the older children learn how to be caring, patient and responsible in helping and setting good examples for their younger classmates.

“I’ve always enjoyed preschool aged children and having them in my home,” Towle says.

She has two children of her own who both leaned the Montessori method. Towle’s first job was at Learning Tree Montessori where she also had her son enrolled. When her daughter was preschool aged Towle worked at Queen Ann Montessori and brought her daughter along.

She worked five years in these two settings, with the goal of eventually creating her own school, modeling Queen Ann Montessori, which was also in a home.

Towle and her family bought and lived in their house for ten years. When they were ready to move, instead of selling Towle opened the Happy Valley Montessori.

She’s stayed true to the methods of Maria Montessori while keeping her enrollment prices fairly low compared to other nearby Montessori schools.

“My goal is to make my school affordable for the average family income,” Towle states.