Lullabies and the power of self discipline

I have a challenge for any readers to try. Set aside an hour, find a darkened, quiet room and lay down with a cozy blanket. During this hour you can't talk, need to lay relatively still, and listen to a soothing lullaby.

Oh, and don't fall asleep.

Because that's what some of the three and four year olds' at school accomplish, and when you think about it in that context it's sort of impressive. Now granted some of them are still awake after an hour because they weren't actually laying still and trying to sleep....but usually at this time of the year they're all pretty well used to the routine. Still, it takes a lot of self control and discipline to lay quietly for a hour with nothing to distract your mind.

I have to say that filling in for another staff member in the nap room has made for quite a relaxing hour. Now if only I could be the one who gets to fall asleep.....

Montessori Sunday: The Prepared Environment

"The things he sees are not just remembered; 

they form a part of his soul." 

Maria Montessori

So this Sunday instead of talking about a specific material I'm going to highlight the importance of the Montessori prepared environment. It is a HUGE topic, so this week I'm only going to focus on the arrangement of materials.

Like other preschool settings Montessori classroom have furniture that is child sized but it goes beyond the normal daycare. It's not just tables and chairs that are small, but the shelves, the handles of the faucet, the knobs on the door, and just about everything else is meant to be in reach of the children. Yes, this means that it is very likely children may take out a material they are not yet ready to use. That's ok. We want them to learn restraint against temptation and impulse. It also means that they do not need to wait for an adult to assist them. 

Imagine how frustrating it would be if each morning you needed to wait for your boss to provide you with your keyboard before you could get started for the day. And then when you make a typo you need to go track down that same boss and ask them for the key for the backspace button, which they then took back as soon as the typo was fixed. (Actually this sounds a lot like my days as a lowly cashier at a chain bookstore....but that's another blog....). This is basically what happens in a typical preschool setting. A child may want to do an art project but the supplies are kept out of reach and the teacher is the only one who can use the glue. The child is kept dependent upon the adult to provide them with the things they need. 

Cleaning paint off the floor by the easel.
Paint is kept at the easel all day, along with a spray bottle
to wet the watercolors as they dry out

In a Montessori classroom all these things are kept not only where the child can reach them, but they are also shown how to use them. Scissors are introduced, complete with small papers to practice snipping on, and more complicated lines when the child has mastered the basics. Pasting is an activity all it's own, and while the container of paste may be small to prevent the child from going completely overboard, it is always available and refilled when necessary. 

These preparatory lessons make it so the child can successfully complete a more advanced project. A perfect example is out in our classroom right now. This flower art involves the child cutting out the stem, soil and flower from three separate pieces of paper and then gluing them together. There was one little girl who really wanted to do this work, but wasn't well versed in scissors yet that we could direct to the earlier scissor work and let her know she needed to practice that first.

The entire classroom is situated this way, and in fact the materials are even arranged on the shelves in order (especially in the math and language area) so it is easy for the child to see what they need to learn and practice before advancing to the next thing. The classroom space is also divided into four basic areas (practical life, sensorial, language and math). This division helps the child classify the types of activities, and can help the newer children become more comfortable in the classroom because most of their activities are located in one small area of the room.

A fabric wall hanging adds a colorful touch to a bare wall
(thanks mom!)

The materials of the classroom though do not just refer to the activities though. The furnishing of the room are also an important part of the environment. Montessori advocated that not only should all the items be sized for the children, but also be light enough for them to move and re-arrange as needed. She also said that the objects in the room should be in good repair and beautiful, so the children would be better able to sense their value and respect them. A table covered in nicks, scratches and pencil marks doesn't encourage a child to keep his pencil on the paper. A pristine table on the other hand will violently show up the same errant pencil and demonstrate to the child the consequence of actions.

And this furnishing goes beyond the necessities of teaching, to beautifying the classroom. Dr. Montessori came to realize that children could love and appreciate fine artwork and decorations and so she put them in the classroom. Their purpose was to expose the children to the beauty of the world, and to make the environment feel more home like and of greater importance to them. It was these small additions and attention to detail that teaches the children what respect for the environment means, and instills in them a desire to create lovely spaces.

Inspiration

In the classroom we often talk about the children being 'inspired' by one another. Or if they're doing something inappropriate we call it "monkey see, monkey do" (though not in front of them!). But they really like when we use inspired, and why shouldn't we try and increase their vocabulary?

Anyways, usually this is a great situation. One child sees another do an activity and wants to try it for themselves. Or they see someone else take a different approach to the materials (like laying the pink tower sideways, instead of building it straight up) and then want to see if they can do the same thing. Obviously this also means we want to put a stop to anything that might get out of hand. Like with the magnet work, we allow the children to bring one item at a time over to their table to try out, but as soon as we see someone wandering around with the magnet, waving it around, they are asked to put that work away.

Today I was re-directing D by doing some fetching with classified cards. Classified cards are pretty much what they sound like, a set of cards with a common theme (vegetables, tools, kitchen objects, etc.) that help build vocabulary. In our room we have two identical sets of the cards, one set that is blank and one that has the words printed on it. The child can either match the pictures on their own, or with a friend, or they can have a teacher give them the name of the object and then check the card they bring back against the labeled picture.

As I helped D get set up O, the newest child in our classroom, showed a lot of interest so I asked if he wanted to do some as well. While he was setting up, a third child, F, also asked to fetch some cards. I long ago realized that 3 children in the max I can handle with this activity and it's still really busy. Asking each child to get a certain card, helping them check the one they bring back, and remember which cards go with who!

They thought it was great though. And in fact their eagerness inspired a fourth child, A, to ask if he could do some too! It was so great, all these children were busy and engaged, focused on what they were doing as they went back and forth between me and their pile of cards. Ok, so D kept getting distracted, but he did eventually bring me all his cards!

Explanations

How exactly do you explain "jury duty' to preschoolers?

Anybody? Ideas? Anyone?

After sitting around for over 2 hours this morning just to be dismissed from fulfilling my "civic duty" I came back just in time for half-day dismissal. A bunch of happy, bouncy kids completed my greeting back and then they began hitting me with the tough question-

"Where were you?"

"Um...." How do you explain jury duty to that age group? I was caught a bit flat footed by this (not sure why I didn't expect it!) and started off just saying "I had to go to the courthouse". But all that got me was the further question "Why?" So I told them that I had gone to try and help some people make a decision, but they didn't need me to so I got to come back. That pretty much settled the matter with the Children's House. Though one older boy, M, was a bit more concerned, it seemed like he thought that HE might have to go and do jury duty.

The elementary students were a lot more curious, asking some good questions. Luckily since they already knew what a jury and court were about, it made my explanation a lot easier! But I guess you have to start learning somewhere. I wonder if we have any future lawyers or judges in our school?

I spy with my little eye

Over the course of the year we've gone through a lot of different activities during the transition time between recess in nap. In less than half and hour myself and another teacher need to get 10 children inside, undressed (remember I'm in Minnesota and winter gear is in a category all its own!) with everything put away, through the bathroom and calmed down enough to quietly walk into a darkened room to lay down silently for an hour. 

It's gotten easier as the year has gone on, but there's still a huge span in how quickly those children go through the process. We have some children who will be done in about 5 minutes, and then other who take nearly twenty before they're even lined up to use the bathroom. To help fill up this gap time we used to sing songs, play the animal guessing game, pretend to make applesauce/pickles/cupcakes/you get the idea. For a while I would even  grab a book to read to the whole group. 

However, all of these things required adult participation to some extent. And even though there are two teachers, it's pretty common to have children spread out in a few locations (near the boot racks, in the coat room, in the hallway, and the bathroom itself). That makes it hard to keep an eye on everyone and making sure the stragglers are still moving along. 

So what's the Montessori solution? Give them something they can do themselves.

Enter "I spy"and "look and find" books. The first child done is in charge of the book, they choose which page to look at and who's turn it is to search for the hidden object. The easier versions of these books have a separate picture of the mystery object along with the word, so they're perfect for the non-readers to independently see what they need to find.

I don't think any parent would object
to good old Winnie the Pooh

The verdict? The children love them, and I think our overall pace of coming in has sped up because they all want to be the one to choose the book. There have been occasions of over zealousness, but because they all get a chance to participate at some level these are pretty mild. My biggest concern as a teacher has been trying to find books that aren't "brands". Especially in Montessori we try to avoid tv and movie themed characters as much as possible. Unfortunately that is what is available at the  preschool level and so I can only hope that having it as an independent activity is better than exposing them to commercial characters.

Real math

So two of the older girls got in an argument right at the end of the school day. A insisted that 5 plus 5 was 10 and G was convinced that it wasn't. A was visibly upset when she turned to me, barely keeping back tears of discouragement because she KNEW she was right. Now I could have just agreed and told G that A was right (after all, I do know what 5+5 is), but that's not the Montessori way.

Instead I told them to each fetch 5 of some object and then we'd combine them and count to find the total. Man, they thought that was a great idea and almost tripped over each other in their hurry to go find something. After we added the objects together and G took it in stride that she had been wrong and that 5+5 actually was 10, what did they do next? Why, asked me to do some more problems!

So instead of ending the day with one child upset that she had been wrong, we ended the day with three children (somewhere or other I picked up an extra who was interested in joining us) happily doing real life math. I gave them some addition problems, some division and even subtraction scenarios.

The biggest upset? When I told them that they needed to get ready to go home.

Spring is in the air!

And what does that mean at school?

1. Most of the snow is in the process of melting. Not melted, mind you, but melting. There's still enough in the back yard that we can pull out the sleds at recess. There's also enough  melted that said sleds can become extremely muddy. (Hence why a two children spent recess cleaning the mud off them).

2. Spring themed art work has appeared on the shelf, and our art bulletin board. Cutting tulips out of construction paper and 'planting' them on more construction paper has been a big hit today. Though for some reason we have an excessive amount of pink ones....hmm....

3. Snow pants, hats and mittens are being forgotten like crazy. It's actually quite entertaining how some children show up with full winter gear (including an additional sweatshirt and neck warmer) while others come in tennis shoes and a fleece jacket.

4. New students are interviewing--much to the delight of our current children who are so exuberant in their excitement over new faces that they might be just a little bit overwhelming.

5. Distraction and commotion have become the norm but work still gets done. Even with a rather large vomiting incident this morning the children kept on working with hardly a break in their own pursuits. Ok....so there were quite a few stories that began with "this one time, when I threw up...." but really, a lot of work did get done.

6. And the best sign yet? The fact that even with all their teachers out of the room tending a sick child, chaos didn't consume the room. And each child who had to go to the bathroom during recess could be trusted without an escort. And no one needed to be reminded to hang up their jackets and place their lunch boxes on the shelf. It all just happened.

Sigh...our class is growing up :)