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.