Montessori Sunday: Art Activities

A little late but here's a brief look at art materials in the classroom.

Maria Montessori often pressed teachers to provide "the best for the smallest", meaning that we shouldn't give children tools that were inferior to adult versions. Instead she wanted to ensure they could experience the best materials possible. That could mean giving them a child sized rack with a wooden handle that won't bend like the plastic ones which are more common.

She also wanted children to be exposed to more than watercolors and crayons that are the staple of most preschool rooms today. Her books talk about giving children real clay to build small sculptures with, and oil based paints to explore with. Montessori wanted to have children learn how to sew with real, sharp needles (that are sometimes very hard to thread for such small fingers!).

The art aspect of Montessori isn't often included when most people sum up the Method to others. I think it's because of the big cultural shift away from art education in general. Of course in the classroom there are lots of opportunities for children to be creative beyond the art materials, but I'd like to focus on the actual art works today.

Currently on my shelf for the new three year old students I have-

My homemade rubbing blocks. 

The green is very rough sandpaper that is mounted on 

pre-cut wood blocks from the local craft store.  

The child places a piece of paper on top of the shape 

and rubs over it with a crayon to make the image appear.

• Drawing with colored pencils
• Simple cutting paper for scissors
• Modeling clay
• Pasting pre-cut shapes
• Rubbing with crayons
• Watercolor painting

As the year goes on I'll update some of these activities (like adding different papers to the scissor cutting), while others will be rotated out and replaced with more challenging work (such as exchanging the pasting activity for a paper making work).

I'm thinking about doing a winter and spring themed art activity as well when the time rolls around, but don't want to focus too much on the holidays and seasons. I previously worked at a school that tried to do a different type of art project each week to follow the theme. It was far too much work. A lot of prep time on the part of the adults and a lot of time spent nagging each child to make sure they had a completed project to bring home. It wasn't very Montessori and I just didn't like doing it. I also noticed that the children who were really interested finished their project right away and wanted to do another (though they couldn't because we didn't have time to prepare extras). Meanwhile the children who weren't enthusiastic would drag their feet and avoid the art project.

I'd rather have a situation like the one that happened in the classroom last year. We had a work where the children cut the parts of flowers out of paper and glued them together. All the children were very interested when we first put the work on the shelf, but after a bit only a few children were interested. But these children were extremely interested in cutting out those particular shapes and putting them together. So much so that they made several each day for days on end.

The end result? Most children just brought home 1 or 2 paper flowers, while a few brought home dozens. I feel like the parents got a much better idea of what their children ACTUALLY liked to do, rather than what they were being forced to do.