When a child first starts at a Montessori setting, they will usually flit from one thing to another, and not spend a great deal of time on any activity for long. This is normal and natural.
They need to be shown how to carry out the activities through well-constructed demonstrations before they are able to develop concentration and mastery.
Therefore it is necessary to allow children to investigate the different activities until one catches their attention. Then a demonstration should be carried out to show them how to perform the activity correctly.
If they lose interest part way through the demonstration, leave it for another day and see what else catches their attention.
Only when a child’s attention can be held for the entire length of the demonstration, should they be allowed to perform it themselves.
Each demonstration should be carried out flawlessly, which means the practitioner should have practiced the demonstration themselves many times before to ensure that they can show the child exactly what to do without any mistakes.
The flawless demonstrations are key to a child’s learning, as the Montessori methods greatly rely on a child’s ‘absorbent mind’ to aid a child’s learning of skills.
This means if the practitioner makes mistakes then so will the child when they carry out the activity themselves. For this reason all activities should be easily and confidently performed by the practitioner so that the child can do the same.
To ensure a child will learn confidently, the atmosphere in the setting must be:
a. Fun and interesting
b. Attract the child’s sense of suspense, wonder and magic.
This can be achieved by the practitioners approach to the activity and ensuring that they are able to perform the activities confidently and without hesitation.
If a child is able to perform the activity easily, then it is fair to say that the child does not need to practice this activity unless they choose to for pleasure, as their skills are above the skills level of this activity.
If however, they make a lot of mistakes and are unable to complete the task independently then the activity could be above their ability level and other skills need to be acquired before this particular activity can be tackled effectively.
On the other hand, if the child can perform the task, making only a few mistakes, then they are likely to repeat this activity over and over again until they have perfected it themselves. This activity is therefore regarded as being at the right development level for the child.
It is this willingness and need to carry out a process repeatedly, in order to perfect a skill that develops a child’s confidence, concentration and sense of achievement, when taking part in the tasks independently.
This in turn develops a love of learning which practitioners are keen to witness.
For this reason, if a child does not willingly engage in an activity, has little interest or cannot follow a complete process from beginning to end without a lot of errors, then the task should be set aside until further skills have been acquired from other activities.
The Montessori Method of learning is therefore skills and activity based.
Every activity fulfils a practical purpose or is part of an end goal, hence seen as a ‘child’s work’.
In order to develop, self-motivation, determination and self-reliance, activities should never be:
• Explained only orally – they must be demonstrated physically
• Or demonstrated in parts with the child.
This is because the child needs to see the whole process from start to finish, so that they can remember the process in its entirety in order to be able to work through it themselves.