Only in a Montessori School....

Only at a Montessori school could you have half a dozen preschoolers come racing in to a room for their afternoon snack (which they are EXTREMELY hungry for by the way!) and then have them start whispering. And then, when the teacher supervising them comes in, they tell the teacher(!) "Shhh! Someone's sleeping!: Followed by 10 mins of almost silent snacking so the napping classmate could have a chance to wake up on her own.

Please award points in the areas of self-control and awareness of others to the Montessori Method.

Things break

A Montessori classroom has lots of real glass, ceramic and metal objects in it. Now, the point is so that when they break children see that there is a real consequence and learn to handle the materials carefully. As opposed to a plastic cup, which doesn't even get a scratch when chucked at the floor. So even though it has a purpose it's still sad when something has to break.

The children at this point know that they're not allowed to walk in where the broken glass is, but it's still an event that they all flock to see. And today we had 3! breakages of glass! That's more than I think we've had total since Christmas break.

Gasp!  A child with glass!

The first was an accident, but one that could have been prevented. Two older children were being silly with an activity involving a blindfold and knocked a vase over. Only thing worse than cleaning up shattered glass? Cleaning up shattered glass in a pool of water.

The second glass breakage I didn't directly observe and luckily another teacher cleaned it up (whew!). A child was standing in line, waiting to wash her dishes and obviously wasn't standing very quietly because the glass cup from her orange squeezing went sliding off the tray and crashed tot he floor. This one made me scratch my head a little bit because as the other teacher was cleaning it up I heard the little girl ask "what happened?" "A, what did happen?" and she grinned up at me "I broke it!" Hmmm...I think maybe we need to go over how we do NOT want to break things.

And the third breakage? Well that was entirely my fault. No children in the room at the end of the day and I'm trying to put away dishes. A little bottle rolled off the pile of things I was carrying and cracked apart on the floor. I could only stare at it in disbelief, thinking "Seriously? Did I just do that?"

Risk of the business I guess.

Home Life Interruption

I apologize in advance that this fuzzy thing will be taking up my blogging time for the rest of the week.

Montessori Sunday: Table Scrubbing

So I know I've done this activity before, but it's a good one! Plus this time I have two stories to go with it!

Table scrubbing is in the area of practical life, meaning is is usually introduced to younger children. However, because it's  a longer process and is usually pretty messy, it's necessary to make sure the child has mastered some other presentations first. Especially the act of pouring water!

Possible set up for table washing

With table scrubbing the guide helps the child put on an aprong and find a table that needs to be cleaned. The child will bring a small chowki next to the table to put the materials on, and move the chair to the side. The bucket with materials is brought over and the child is given the name of each object. In this case there is a basin for water, a scrub brush, a bar of soap, a sponge, and cloth for drying. There may also be a bucket to empty the basin in to, but in our classroom the basin has handles so we use just that.

The guide has the child fill the pitcher with water and empty it in to the basin, until there is enough water to wet the brush. The child is shown how to apply a small amount of soap to the brush and then the washing begins. The guide demonstrates how to move the brush in circular motions, starting at the top left of the table (the same place you start writing on a piece of paper!). After the whole table has been scrubbed, the sponge is wet and the guide draws in a slow strokes across the table, showing the child the collected soap. The sponge is rinsed as needed, and the teacher draws the childs' attention to the process of squeezing out the sponge. (I feel  like quite a few of our children have missed this part!). After all the soap is wiped up the table is dried with a small cloth, again using circular motions.

Now the materials for table scrubbing make is pretty obvious what the activity is for, that's actually part of being a practical life material: the purpose is clear to the child. In fact it's so clear that S decided she wanted to take it out, even though she hasn't had a formal presentation she figured she knew enough about it. She put on her apron, got a chowki and took the bucket out. She brought the pitcher to the sink and filled it up.

Then she dumped it into the basin....with everything else still in there. Ooops! While the purpose may be obvious, the proper presentation is still important. Eventually I saw that she had way too much water on the table and noticed everything floating in the basin when I went to help her out. I asked if she needed help and S (who is normally very shy and does not like to talk at all) nodded vigorously. Together we dried all the water up and went back to the beginning of the activity to begin a proper presentation.

A vigorously scrubbing a table, note the blurred hand motion!

Table scrubbing is an activity that involves the child's whole body. They stand while doing it, and the act of scrubbing across the table engages a lot of muscles. As a result it's a very calming process, and if the child is focused on the activity they may end up scrubbing the same table over and over again!

Fortunately table scrubbing is also a potentially messy process. Yes, I said 'fortunately', not 'unfortunately'. After all it's just soap and water. Spills can be wiped up, clothing can be changed, and the child can learn to be more conscious of their movements and the consequences of those same movements.

Take A for example. She is a child who is always in a rush. She's the one we are constantly reminding to walk. She always wants to know what everyone else is up to, and constantly leaves her own work out to investigate. Table scrubbing is perfect for her. She gets so involved in using her whole body to move that brush around that she isn't distracted by anything going on around her. Well...usually. She also is in such a rush that she forgets to squeeze out the sponge. In fact she forgot this part so much the last time she scrubbed a tablet that she went through our entire supply of drying cloths moping it up. On the other hand, she was very focused on what she was doing, and new exactly what she needed to do to clean it up. Improvements from the start of the year.

The Ants go Marching

(If you don't know the tune now's the time to look it up!)

The Ants go Marching (Montessori style!) 
The ants go marching to the snack
Uh oh!
Uh oh!
The ants go marching to the snack
Uh oh!
Uh oh!
What will we do?
Are they 'fire' ants?
Let me get them!
No, don't crush the ants!
And they all go marching under the wall
to get away from the kids
Boom, boom, boom, boom
Boom, boom, boom boom

Ants outside ='s some excitement
Ants inside ='s HUGE excitement

Don't ask me why, maybe it's because there aren't any ants outside in the winter? Either way there's been several large crowds at random times of the day when a child spots an ant. The little insects are quite attracted to our snack area due to the large amounts of crumbs available (especially on granola bar day!) We've got children who insist that they are "fire" ants (my co-teacher is kind of regretting having that bug book out on the shelf!) and are half afraid of being bitten. Then on the opposite end of the spectrum are the children who can't wait to crush the insects underfoot. If I were those ants....I wouldn't risk the visit.

Bribery. Yes it is part of Montessori

But only when the bribery is educational!

D has had this thing for the past week or two where he pouts coming in to school, acting like he doesn't want to be there. Now I do think he doesn't want dad to leave, but I do think he enjoys being at school. Or at least he's interested and paying attention because his dad said he was trying to draw 'd's' and saying things that started with 'd' at home, and that was one of the sandpaper letters I introduced to him last week.

Regardless he was doing his little pouting act this morning, so I kept giving him verbal nudges to keep him going and we finally got in the classroom. I had him sit down so we could have a little talk (his brother was pretty jealous!) and tried to find out why he didn't want to come in to class in the mornings, and to explain that he was going to be coming in so we needed to think of a way to make it more fun for him. Now since D is only 3 1/2 he didn't have too much insight or ideas, but I did get him to agree to go and choose a book with me. The plan is that we will read that book together every morning to help give him a starting point for the day.

The hardest part of this was actually choosing a book. D really wanted the monster truck book and I had to explain that we had borrowed it from the library and needed to return it. Then when we went to look in the library he wanted to choose "The Hobbit". That's right, that several hundred page novel by J.R. Tolkien. In D's defense his dad is reading that to the boys at home, and I think he was just excited to see that we had the same copy. But again, I needed to tell him that it wasn't an appropriate choice! 

Luckily he settled on 'If the Dinosaur's came back", which I can actually read in the time we have allotted. Hopefully D will be excited to come in to hear it...and if not maybe I'll try to bribe him with the hobbit!