I saw one of these on another blog somewhere, and I thought it would be good to see exactly WHAT we are doing with our school time. And maybe some of you out there that are more experienced than I can tell me if this is typical, or if I should be doing some things differently to get a more desirable result. I posted yesterday about my frustration with E's lack of concentration. I know she is only 2, but it doesn't seem like ANYTHING other than sometimes her animal figurines or our rainbow rice box can hold her attention for more than 3 minutes. The exception is books, she will sit for hours and ask you to "read another" and "read it again," but when it comes to playing or working on something, she will not stick with it for any length of time.
Here's what school looked like this morning:
8:50 - roll out mat and choose animals and zoo book
8:55 - "All done with the animal book, put it away."
8:56 - choose pouring beans
8:59 - "All done." choose spooning rice, refuses to use spoon. I switched out the rice for beans so she could use her hands. Her process was: move one bean, spend 1 1/2 minutes running around, fixing her shoes, finding stuffed animals, etc, repeat.
9:11 - put away the rice and choose nesting/stacking blocks
9:17 - ask for help putting the nesting/stacking blocks away
9:19 - choose color box 2 (still only 6 colors, I have yet to make the rest)
9:22 - I gave E a demonstration on how to line up the color pairs at the edge of her mat
9:24 - put away the colors and choose folding cloths, asked for help right away
9:27 - E refused to pay attention to my demonstration with the folding cloths, so I left her to herself, figuring I would come back later to demonstrate again. She was not happy.
9:30 - put away folding cloths and asked for help rolling up her mat.
There you have it, a total of 40 minutes this morning. I usually try to do some art, music, or sensory box time when she is done with her work, but today we had to make a trip to Target, so I'll have to tell her Daddy to give her those options when I am at work tonight.
2 comments:
Great job! Looks perfectly normal to me considering you just started. It's great that she's got the work mat thing down. I'm sure her concentration will improve the more you do the activities. I read somewhere to try not to get frustrated at the beginning and just model the behavior you want. Eventually they should pick it up. How do you like using the Montessori Method?
MB - I am loving it! Before munchkin, I was an elementary music teacher, so I already had an education background. But reading all the books and seeing the classrooms and materials, it just made it all click for me. I'm probably annoying all of my friends by talking about it constantly, but I can see how it is so good for the kids, and for me as well! :) Thanks for the comment!
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