We're workin'!

Wow! Only one month in to school and already I had trouble giving presentation because the children where too busy working and I didn't want to interrupt them. That's wonderful!

Ok, ok, so it wasn't all day and it wasn't always everyone, but as the general flow for the day I think I can confidently say that they were all pretty busy. There were a few times when I was busy helping one child or another and someone else would be wandering or need my assistance in some way, but by the time I could get to them they always seemed to have either fixed the problem or chosen a work to do. It was great!

The two C's at the cloth washing stand

C repeated the cloth washing activity I had shown her pretty much perfectly. If you know anything about small children you should have realized by now that sometimes they're spot on with their imitation, but not always. I was so proud of her for remembering all the steps...well and of course for using the lovely stand my parents had built for the classroom.

S meanwhile was actually practicing things, a big accomplishment for her as she normally just observers others and waits for me to give her a new presentation. It seems like the funnel pouring work was entertaining enough to hold her attention.

O and W, my two usual rambunctious ones, were their usual bouncy selves, but both found some things to engage in with for some longer periods. O was very interested in the new clay I put out, one with a more natural color and stiffer consistency than what was on the shelf originally. I think it will be great for all the children to use it, since they need to use more of their hand muscles to manipulate it.

C working with the scissors

The other C in our classroom was also pretty busy today, I still needed to watch and make sure he stuck only to materials had been shown, but luckily when he does take out a work he stays very engaged with it; especially the snipping work with the scissors. He really likes the little origami envelopes to tuck the pieces in once they are cut.

M, is my student who can be so quiet that I'm not always sure what shes' up to. Today I watched her do the pasting over and over until she had three pages covered in little shapes. I think the main reason she stopped was she ran out of good shapes! She put the work away when she was done, but I noticed the table was a bit sticky still and asked her to wipe it up. She absolutely jumped on that task and in less than a minute the table was sparkling! Not too bad for a girl who usually likes to say "I don't want to."

I saw this possibility in the beginning of the year, and I'm really glad we'er getting to that point where they have enough things that interest them to keep busy all morning. Of course I have to be careful not to distract them. Which means I can't read books, sing songs, or play sound games with anyone else. S asked near the end of work time if I would do a sound game with her. I said yes and she barely had time to get the basket of objects before C was rolling out a mat for us to work at, while the other C and M were cleaning up their work as quickly as possible. W wanted to join us right away, and did an ultra fast clean-up when I reminded him about all the split peas he had spilt on to the floor.

Oh well, I guess I can't complain since they did actually clean everything up before coming to join us!

Working, working, everyone is working.

Follow the child

One of Montessori's foundational ideas is following the child. This means that as a guide, we introduce children to activities that interest them, and are within reach of their current abilities. This means that no matter how interested they are in the beautiful bead chains, we won't present them until the child is able to count confidently. Instead a good guide will redirect the child to an activity more suited to their current ability.

That's exactly what I did with Q today. She had taken out the spindle boxes and was happily dropping spindles in to random boxes when I found her. I gently told her she hadn't had that presentation yet, but if she wanted to count we could work on the number rods together. The number rods are the child's first formal introduction to numbers in the classroom, usually we introduce them at around 4 years of age. Since Q is just barely 3.5 I figured I'd introduce her to the first 3 or so rods and that would be about as much counting as she could handle.

I was completely wrong.

After she had set up all the rods I sat at the mat with her and was pretty surprised when she readily identified the rods of 1 to 3 with no problem. 4 and 5 needed some counting, but I was blown away by her steady focus and concentration on the task at hand. So I made it a little harder. I sat on a stool a ways across the room and asked her to fetch a specific rod for me. Fetching this way is harder because not only does the child need to remember what they are looking for longer, but there are plenty of opportunities for distraction while they walk from one point of the room to another.

Q did much better than I had even hoped. I kept it pretty easy for her, but she brought me the correct rod most of the time...though once I did catch her asking an older child to help her find the correct rod! She really liked the one on one time though, and was so confident in her counting. I'm so glad that I followed her obvious interest in numbers, because from set up to complete clean up she was engaged in this counting activity for close to an hour.

Now that is impressive a 3 1/2 year old!