The Thirty Little Hands

I substituted today in one of our school's Lower Elementary classrooms.   Montessori has mixed-age classrooms and this level spans the traditional first through third grade levels.   The third year students were on their end of year trip to Washington, D.C. with their teachers so I was helping out with the first and second years.

I had a charming day getting to know some of the students I hadn't had a chance to work with before and had a chance to get re-accquainted with those I knew but hadn't seen in a while.   I learned a lot about dinosaurs and reptiles as they shared with me their current project work and I discovered how well these children played together outside in football as a team, without adult intervention or supervision.

When the afternoon's work cycle was over, the student with the responsibility to ring the three o'clock bell rang the small, brass handbell hanging from the cabinet knob.   All the children began immediately putting up their work.    The room had been covered with research projects, art projects, language lessons and books and within three minutes, everything was put up in the appropriate cubby or on the proper shelf.    Then, I watched something I didn't expect to see.

Each of these students had an assigned job for the day (or possibly week.)   Some of them got hand brooms and dust pans and started sweeping up crumbs, dirt and debris from the floors.   Some children had cloths and spray bottles and began to clean not only the table tops, but the chairs and table legs.     There were two students who had rug cleaning as their chore for the day.   They folded them up, took them outside and beat them off before bringing them back into the classroom and placing them neatly in their spots on the floor.

There were jobs I didn't even know were being done.   Two of the students went upstairs to the Upper Elementary classroom to feed the turtles and fish, since the entire class was on a field trip for the day. Three other students sounded like they were in the bathroom together making unnecessary noise until I looked in to find them shredding newspaper and spraying water into a large plastic bin.   When I asked, they told me they were rotating the compost for the earthworms in the container.

In twelve minutes from the point the one student rang the bell, thirty little hands had made short work of the cleaning up.   At thirteen minutes, all the students were sitting quietly in a circle, waiting for the teacher to speak.   These first- and second-grade children are happy to be a part of the cleaning process and are proud of what they have contributed to the classroom.

It is amazing how much small children can accomplish.

The Big Boy Update:  We went to a seafood restaurant for dinner last night.   My son loved his popcorn shrimp and orange slices.   As we were leaving he said, "can I have my birthday here?"

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   My daughter is telling me in a loud voice down the stairs that she ate all of her pasta and her brother ate all of his raisins but he didn't eat all of his pasta.   There is more information, but it involves a lot of 'and's' and constitutes one of the longest run-on sentences in the northern hemisphere, so I won't burden you with it.

Fitness Update:  Six miles in misting rain in perfect weather.   Very refreshing.