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A Day in the Life of a Montessori Child
by Tim Seldin
President of the Montessori Foundation
Information provided
by: www.montessori.org
It is dark at 8:00 on this mid-winter's morning when Teddy
and Jennifer's mom pulls in to the drop off circle at New
Gate. Her two children have been here since each was a toddler.
She has made this trip so often over the years that New Gate
feels like her second home. She works in town and typically
can't leave work until after 5. Her husband teaches in the
local public schools and is off much earlier. He'll pick the
children up from the after school Studio program at 4:30,
but if he's late, he knows that they'll be fine until he arrives.
Many working families appreciate its extended day and summer
camp.
Teddy and Jennifer definitely think of New Gate as their second
family. Jennifer is one of those children who, after eight
years at New Gate, speaks about Montessori with affection
and conviction. Visitors often find her coming up without
a moment's hesitation to greet them and offer a cup of coffee
or campus tour. When people ask her if she likes it in Montessori,
she will smile and say "Sure, how could anyone not love
it here. Your teachers are your best friends, the work is
really interesting, and the other kids are like my brothers
and sisters. Its a family. You feel really close to everyone."
Jennifer walks Teddy, who's 4, to his morning supervision
room. After dropping him off, she walks into the upper elementary
class where she is a 5th grader. She joins two of her friends
in the media center, and sits and talks quietly waiting for
class to start at 8:30.
Teddy's morning supervision is in his normal classroom. After
hanging up his coat, he walks over to Whelma, the staff member
in charge of his room this morning until school officially
begins at 9:00. He asks if there is anything ready to eat.
Whelma suggests that he help himself. He scoops out a bowl
of cereal from a small bin, and adds milk. He takes his morning
snack over to a table and eats. Children and their parents
drift in to the room every so often, and gradually the number
of children in the early morning program grows to about 10.
After eating his breakfast, Teddy meanders over to the easel
and begins to paint with Teresa, a little girl just 3 who
has only joined the class over the last few weeks. They paint
quietly, talking back and forth about nothing in particular.
Eventually Teddy tires of painting. He is tempted for a moment
just to walk away and leave the easel messy, but he carefully
cleans up and away puts his materials.
At 8:30, his teachers arrive, along with several more children.
Others follow over the next few minutes until all of the students
and the two adults quietly move about the room.
Montessori children work with hands-on learning materials
that make abstract concepts clear and concrete. They allow
young students to develop a clear inner image of concepts
in mathematics, such as how big is a thousand, what we mean
when we refer to the 'hundreds' column, and what is taking
place when we divide one number by another. This approach
makes sense to children. Through this foundation of concrete
experiential learning, operations in Mathematics, such as
addition, become clear and concrete, allowing the child to
internalize a clear picture of how the process works.
Teddy and another child have begun to work together to construct
and solve a mathematical problem. Using sets of number cards,
each decides how many units, tens, hundreds, and thousands
will be in his addend. The cards showing the units 1 to 9
are printed in green, the cards showing the numbers from 10
to 90 are printed in blue, the hundreds from 100 to 900 are
printed with red ink, and the cards showing the numbers 1000
to 9000 are printed in green again because they represent
units of thousands.
As Teddy and his friend construct their numbers, they decide
how many units they want, find the card showing that quantity,
and place it at the upper right-hand corner of their work
space. Next they go to the bank, a central collection of golden
bead material, and gather the number of unit beads that corresponds
with the number card selected. They repeat this process with
the tens, hundreds, and thousands.
The children combine the two addends in the process we call
addition. Beginning with the units, the children count the
combined quantities to determine the result of adding the
two together. When the result is nine or less, they find the
large number card that represents the answer. When the addition
results in a quantity of ten beads or more, the children stop
at the count of ten and carry the ten unit beads to the bank
to exchange them for a ten-bar: ten units equals one unit
of ten. They repeat this process with the tens, hundreds,
and thousands.
It's about 10 o'clock now, and Teddy is a bit hungry. He
wanders over to the snack table and prepares himself several
pieces of celery stuffed with peanut butter. He pours himself
a cup of apple juice, using a little pitcher that is just
right for his small hands. When he is finished, Teddy wipes
off his placemat.
Clearing up his snack has put Teddy in the mood to really
clean something, and he selects table washing. He gathers
a bucket, little pitcher, sponge, scrub brush, towel and soap
and proceeds to scrub a small table slowly and methodically.
As he works, he is absorbed in the patterns that his brush
and sponge made in the soap suds on the table's surface. Teddy
returns everything to its storage place. When he is finished,
the table is more or less clean and dry. We have to remember
that a four-year-old washes a table for the sheer pleasure
of the process; the fact that it might lead to a cleaner surface
is incidental. What Teddy is learning above all else is an
inner sense of order, a greater sense of independence, and
a higher ability to concentrate and follow a complex sequence
of steps.
Teddy moves freely around the class, selecting activities
that capture his interest. In a very real sense, Teddy and
his classmates are responsible for the care of this child-sized
environment. When they are hungry, they prepare their own
snack and drink. They go to the bathroom without assistance.
When something spills, they help one another carefully clean
up the mess. We find children cutting raw fruit and vegetables,
sweeping, dusting, washing windows. They set tables, tie their
own shoes, polish silver, and steadily grow in their self-confidence
and independence.
Noticing that the plants needs watering, Teddy carries the
watering can from plant to plant, barely spilling a drop.
Now it's 11 o'clock, and one of his teachers, Mary, comes
over and asks him how the morning has been going. They engage
in conversation about his latest enthusiasms, which leads
Mary to suggest another reading lesson. She and Teddy sit
down at a small rug with several wooden tablets on which the
shapes of letters are traced in sandpaper. Mary selects a
card and slowly traces out the letter d, carefully pronouncing
the letter's phonetic sound: duh, duh, duh. Teddy traces the
letter with his tiny hand and repeats the sound made by his
teacher.
Teddy doesn't know this as the letter d yet, and for the next
year or so, he will only call it by its phonetic sound: duh.
This way, he never needs to learn the familiar process of
converting from the letter name, d, to the sound it makes,
duh. Continuing on with two or three additional letters, Mary
slowly helps Teddy build up a collection of letters which
he knows by their phonetic sounds.
Mary leads Teddy through a three-step process. "Teddy,
this is duh. Can you say duh? Terrific! Now, this is a buh
(the letter b). Teddy, can you show me the duh? Can you give
me the buh? Fine. Okay, what is this (holding up one of the
sandpaper letters just introduced?" Teddy responds, and
the process continues for another few minutes. The entire
lesson is fairly brief; perhaps fifteen minutes or so. Before
long, Teddy will begin to put sounds together to form simple
three-letter words.
Teddy's day continues just like the morning began. He eats
his lunch with the class at 11:45, after which he goes outside
with his friends to play. After lunch, the Spanish teacher
comes into the room and begins to work with small groups of
students. Eventually, she taps Teddy on the shoulder and asks
him if he would like to join her for a lesson. He smiles,
but graciously declines. He is too engaged in the project
that he's chosen.
In the afternoon he does some more art, listens to selections
from a recording of the Nutcracker ballet, works on his shape
names with the geometry cabinet, and completes a puzzle map
of the United States.
When the day is over, Teddy has probably completed twenty
to thirty different activities, most representing curriculum
content quite advanced for someone who after all just turned
four two months ago. But when his dad picks him up at 4:50,
his response to the usual question of "What did you do
in school today" is no different from many children,
"Oh, I don't know. I guess I did a lot of stuff!"
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