About Little Belt Montessori
Little Belt Montessori was formed in 2024 by Kellen Hull. We offer children a space designed with them in mind, and with access to a full set of high quality Montessori Materials. Within this space, they are allowed to explore their environment and materials under the guidance of an AMS and MACTE certified Lead Guide.
Located in the foothills of the big belt mountains, our goal is for children to have a sense of self, place, and community. Maria Montessori believed that children ought to learn to become people of their place and time, and what better place to do that than Downtown Helena! Situated blocks from several parks and surrounded by local history and businesses, Little Belt Montessori aims to be an engaged community member, offering parent education nights, community education nights and other special events throughout the year.
Kellen Hull was born right here in Helena, at St. Pete’s hospital. He attended Jefferson Elementary School, HMS and HHS after that. After graduating from Helena High school Kellen joined AmeriCorps and moved to Portland, Oregon. His first year of Americorps was spent doing trail maintenance and planting native trees around the Portland metro area; his second year was spent working with Parkrose High School Environmental Education classroom, as well as with the Parkrose Neighborhood Association to plan and implement native plantings at a new park in the Parkrose neighborhood.
From there, Kellen started classes at Portland State university towards his undergraduate degree in Literature. While he was working on his undergraduate classes, he found a job as a Spanish speaking classroom assistant at Montessori of Alameda, a bilingual Montessori preschool in Northeast Portland. After enjoying his first few years, and falling into the realization that he had an aptitude for working with preschool aged children, Kellen proceeded to become a Montessori certified Lead Guide through the Montessori of Alameda Teacher Education Program. MOATEP is an on-site, AMS and MACTE affiliated certification program. From there he ran his own classroom for around ten years, thoroughly diving into Maria Montessori’s pedagogy, and the theories of child development on which they were based.
Kellen proceeded to earn a Masters in Early Childhood Education: Curriculum and Instruction (ECE:CI) from Portland State University. During this time he was introduced to, and dived more deeply into, different forms of constructivist education such as Waldorf, Reggio Emilia and other forms of experiential education. Maria Montessori’s pedagogy falls under this umbrella category of child development theory.
After having his first child in 2017, he moved back to Helena with his family and landed at Bloom Montessori School as the Director of Education. In this role, Kellen was in charge of staff training, onboarding, classroom support, and a variety of other programmatic details. His tenure at Bloom ended in 2024 when it closed permanently, which spurred him to explore his interests and passions to guide his next steps. This passion and interest is what lead him to start Little Belt Montessori, a small preschool setting in which he can offer the best fidelity to Maria Montessori’s pedagogies, while still allowing the creative and pedagogical flexibility to adapt those practices and pedagogies to modern life.