Making decisions isn't always easy

The children are in charge of so many decisions over the course of the morning work cycle. They get to choose what to do, when to do it, who to work with (or not), and even how long to work with something. It may not seem like a lot, but to children who are so used to having adults be in charge of them it's a novel idea that they are in control.

Some children settle right in to the idea, like M. I have to admit that she is my star decision maker. I watch her go from activity to activity all morning, it's rare to see her  wandering the room; there's always something she wants to do next. Sometimes I can even hear her decision making as she chats with the other children. Like when she wanted to have snack today and the table was already full so she said to another student how they could go and choose a work to do and then when they were done it would be their turn to have snack.

M is also really flexible with her decisions. She and C were going to do some fetching with cards today, but another child was using the Solar Sytem set that they wanted and as soon as she realized it she paused for a moment, then turned back to C and said "Oh, we can't do that, someone's using it. But we can do the flags instead!" Wow, that's an extremely mature response from a 3 1/2 year old. Not only did she not get upset about someone else using what she wanted, she also got herself on track to do something else.

Now that skill is going to serve her really well at some future job!

But making decisions isn't always easy, and even being able to do so is something that you need to learn. W is on the opposite end of the spectrum from M. He's more than happy to work with the classroom materials, but when he finishes with something it's very obvious that he has no clue what he wants to do next and wanders about the room instead. He gets distracted by what the other children are doing, pausing to watch them for a little bit then wandering off again.

He'll choose some of his standard favorites like watering plants or washing windows, but as these aren't a real challenge for him they're over quickly and he's once again wandering the classroom. He'll often imitate what the other children choose (like this morning when he took out a puzzle after S and C began working on some) but again most of these things that are simpler exercises that don't engage him for long.

For a while I had thought that W really wasn't interested in any of the materials and that's why he wasn't choosing work--nothing appealed to him! But the last few weeks I've been specifically asking him if there is something new I could teach him. Oh he chose a few things, namely work he'd just seen other children working on. So it seemed like he just didn't know what was interesting to HIM and was just following the crowd.

So this week we're starting a new regime to help him learn some choice making skills. I have a box on my desk with pictures of the materials. When I see him wandering we're going to get that box out and choose 5 different materials that he wants to work on. These go in the cover of the box and he chooses one to start with immediately. Then whenever I see him wandering later in the morning I can direct him to go choose one of the other pictures to take out next.

I'm hoping this will help keep him focused because he does seem to want to work, but just isn't sure what to do. He gets to choose the initial materials based on his interest (though currently he seems to mainly choose what is on top of the pile) and so when he's directed to those materials latter it's still  his choice of what to do, rather than mine as adult.

So that's our experiment in decision making this week. Here's hoping that it goes well!