Silence isn't golden, it's difficult!

S hadn't done it for a long time, but today she clammed up.

The whole first half of the year this was pretty typical behavior. She would freeze up as soon as anyone other than her sister spoke to her. But that last month or two she's finally started speaking up. She's still a bit hesitant to answer questions, but making it very clear that you're expecting an answer, and giving her one or two specific things to say usually snapped her out of it.

But that's not what happened today.

She and her sister, N, were wandering around the classroom,`being pretty disruptive and chatting away. I had them stop and said that it was time to choose work. N immediately pipped up that she wanted to make a fish book and took off to get the cards out. S immediately tried to follow her and that's when it all went downhill. I told her to stop and said that N had already chosen a work and she, S, needed to choose her own.

S looked up at me in utter silence, her eyes big and her face shocked. I asked what she would like to do and she clammed up. Patiently waiting and asking the question occasionally in a slightly different way didn't work. She didn't even respond to yes or no questions by moving her head. The only thing that moved was her eyes, flicking from me back down to the floor.

Getting nowhere I led S over to a shelf, saying that maybe she could get some ideas there. She followed me, but when I stopped moving so did she, going back to her frozen state. A couple more minutes of trying to get her to take something out did nothing except give her time to work a few little tears into her eyes.

At this point I figured it was probably just best for me to give her some space, since it was obvious she wasn't going to tell me what was bothering her, or make a choice like  I was asking. So I took something off that shelf that I knew she had mastered and usually liked to do and told her that we were going to go find a table for her to work at. I led her to the quietest corner in the room, figuring it would give her some space to get herself together again. Again she followed me with just a little nudge and I set the work on the table and let her alone.

10 minutes later she was still standing over in the corner, looking at the table.

Another teacher went to talk to her and got the same blank stare I had gotten, along with a few more tears. So she gave her a tissue and also left her alone.

I have to admit that I wish I could have helped her out more, but when a child doesn't respond, what else can you do? I think I'd rather have them yelling furiously at me instead. That I know how to deal with!

Bribery. Yes it is part of Montessori

But only when the bribery is educational!

D has had this thing for the past week or two where he pouts coming in to school, acting like he doesn't want to be there. Now I do think he doesn't want dad to leave, but I do think he enjoys being at school. Or at least he's interested and paying attention because his dad said he was trying to draw 'd's' and saying things that started with 'd' at home, and that was one of the sandpaper letters I introduced to him last week.

Regardless he was doing his little pouting act this morning, so I kept giving him verbal nudges to keep him going and we finally got in the classroom. I had him sit down so we could have a little talk (his brother was pretty jealous!) and tried to find out why he didn't want to come in to class in the mornings, and to explain that he was going to be coming in so we needed to think of a way to make it more fun for him. Now since D is only 3 1/2 he didn't have too much insight or ideas, but I did get him to agree to go and choose a book with me. The plan is that we will read that book together every morning to help give him a starting point for the day.

The hardest part of this was actually choosing a book. D really wanted the monster truck book and I had to explain that we had borrowed it from the library and needed to return it. Then when we went to look in the library he wanted to choose "The Hobbit". That's right, that several hundred page novel by J.R. Tolkien. In D's defense his dad is reading that to the boys at home, and I think he was just excited to see that we had the same copy. But again, I needed to tell him that it wasn't an appropriate choice! 

Luckily he settled on 'If the Dinosaur's came back", which I can actually read in the time we have allotted. Hopefully D will be excited to come in to hear it...and if not maybe I'll try to bribe him with the hobbit!