My children bring home "work" from time to time that they made during the school day. Usually it's nothing to celebrate about from an artistic standpoint. So far we've gotten lots of pages with scribbles on them, some little cards with a stitch or two of thread sewn through them, pieces of paper or foam glued randomly onto something or little pieces of cut paper. In short, not things you'd want to keep in the scrapbook because it doesn't show much artistic skill.
My daughter's painting yesterday was somewhat of an anomaly and it got me thinking about what developmental goals my children are working towards in their Montessori classroom and how those goals are somewhat different than what I've seen elsewhere.
Montessori isn't about finished product, it's about process and the steps within that process. My neighbor's daughter has a wall on which they have the most adorable little artwork and craft things she's done at her school. It's the classic handprint turkey you've seen I'm sure, but all sorts of neat variations on projects a three-year-old can do and be successful doing.
Montessori doesn't do anything like that. The focus is on a specific skill like pinscher grasping and sewing. I've prepared the "sewing cards" for the classes in the past. You cut up little four-inch squares and then poke five or six holes into the paper in a straight line or curve. The child then takes a special needle threader, threads the needle and then sews the needle back and forth across the holes. My two-year-old would come home with little pieces of paper with cross-stitch string sewn into them. She threaded that needle herself (I found out how when I saw the threader they were using and immediately ordered one for myself.)
What's the end product? Not much to celebrate, but the process she's learned and the fine motor skills she's learned and the patience it took for her to carefully thread the needle is the point. We don't have a lot of cool arts and crafts to display around the house that our children have brought home from school, but after seeing what's being done from a learning perspective, I don't mind.
The Big Boy Update: My son was having issues this morning. Before school there were large brown streaks in his pants and when he came home from school he told me he'd pooped in his pants a little, saying, "it was squishy for a while but now it's dry." I think he was a bit backed up because at the end of lunch he tried and tried to go but couldn't. We got home and changed him (washing his lower-half in the tub to get the now crusty matter off him). About twenty minutes later I found him in the bathroom again, saying he'd gone a little in his pants. This time, he was trying to take off the partially-soiled underpants and was unhappy he'd gotten some on his hands...so he wiped them on the wall. I yelled. He cried. I apologized and explained why it wasn't a good idea to wipe poop on the wall. He had another lower-half bath in the tub and then asked me what I'd done to clean the wall so I explained how an adult had to do the cleaning and disinfecting steps and next time, could he just wash his hands in the sink please? About an hour later I came upstairs, wondering where he'd gone to, hear him calling out that he needed a wipe. I think he'd been sitting on the potty for quite some time waiting for me. The good news is, if there was blockage it's gone now. Trust me on this one.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My son has never cared about writing his name, but my daughter seems to want to know how her name is written and spelled. She will frequently get a piece of paper, draw on it, maybe fold it and then come to you and ask you to spell her name. She watches very carefully as you spell her name and then carries the paper around, showing anyone else that her name is on the page.
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