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!