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The Power of Play: A Two-Hour Work-Cycle

Sarah Moudry by | Montessori Blog

workcycle3

The work-cycle is the time, everyday, the children have to work/play at school. Once a child has adapted to the routine of school, he moves from one activity to the next, with very little adult interaction.  He sometimes will choose to be in a group activity, or check-in with the teacher through conversation.  Generally, he plans his day and proceeds with his “auto-education”.  The children’s ability to do this is what allows each child the specific education they need, and each teacher the ability to observation each child and their growth.

Here are five characteristics of play that allow the child the ability to move through his morning effortlessly, as described by Dr. Rachel E.White for the Minnesota Children’s Museum’s report, The Power of Play.

  • PLAY IS PLEASURABLE. Children must enjoy the activity or it is not play.
  • PLAY IS INTRINSICALLY MOTIVATED. Children engage in play simply for the satisfaction the behavior itself brings. It has no extrinsically motivated function or goal.
  • PLAY IS PROCESS ORIENTED. When children play, the means are more important than the ends.
  • PLAY IS FREELY CHOSEN. It is spontaneous and voluntary. If a child is pressured, she will likely not think of the activity as play.
  • PLAY IS ACTIVELY ENGAGED. Players must be physically and/or mentally involved in the activity.

When parents tour a Montessori school they often ask about the difference between play and work.  Play is the work of the child.  We use the term ‘work’ in order to hold it in high regard and respect it as purposeful and meaningful.

This info-graphic is made from the observation of one child for the full two hour work cycle.(2 hours for 12-36 months, 3 hours for beyond 3yrs) I have used different colors and shapes to highlight the different types of activities chosen throughout the morning.

Reclaiming Work as Joyous and Fulfilling: A Montessori Mission

Heike Larson by | Montessori Blog

PART 3 of 3 on Montessori and Play

The child, unlike the adult, is not on his way to death. He is on his way to life. His work is to fashion a man in the fullness of his strength. By the time the adult exists, the child has vanished. So the whole life of the child is an advance toward perfection, toward a greater completeness. From this we may infer that the child will enjoy doing the work needed to complete himself. The child’s life is one in which work–the doing of one’s duty–begets joy and happiness. For adults, the daily round is more often depressing.

–Dr. Maria Montessori, The Absorbent Mind (page 30)

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Many parents fear that Montessori is not playful enough, too academic, and might “rob a child of their childhood.”

Why?

I think there are two reasons: As Montessorians, we call the activities a child engages in “the child’s work.” We speak of the morning “work period.” We ask the child whether he’s completed his “work” and would like to replace it on the shelf. The use of the word “work” is a sign of respect, and meant to highlight the importance of what the child does (as against the sometimes less respectful connotation of “mere play”).

In a world where work generally is the diametrical opposite of play, where work is often synonymous with doing something, not because we like it, but as a means to an end, where work many times implies being told what to do, when and for how long, the use of the word “work” to describe the children’s activities almost necessarily conjures up a bleak, joyless environment.

Add to that the tremendously advanced academic results achieved by Montessori children; the calm, socially mature behavior; the lack of traditional toys, dress-up corners, dolls and the like; the quiet, clean, zen-like beauty of an authentic Montessori class, which stands in sharp contrast to the noisy, cluttered, colorful environment of most preschools, and parents not surprisingly often misinterpret Montessori as a harsh, adult-led, direct instruction environment.

In reality, nothing could be further from the truth! Work, in the Montessori sense, is play, if play is conceived the way Dr. Grey so thoughtfully defined it.

So should Montessorians stop calling the child’s work, work? Should we begin talking about play instead, calling the uninterrupted time “morning play period”, the activities “toys”, and our approach the “Montessori playschool”?

While this might help to make Montessori more accessible to parents in the near term, I think Montessorians rightful resent any such suggestion. Fundamentally, the separation between “play = fun”, and “work = pain” is what is wrong with our world today. We don’t want our children to accept this view of work and play as opposites. Instead, we want them to expect their meaningful activities to be joyful; we want them to continue, throughout their lives, to learn playfully, to view mistakes not as failures, but as learning opportunities, to enjoy the process of learning and applying what they learn to their work not just at age 3 or 6, but all the way into adulthood (instead of switching to extrinsic motivators like grades, gold stars or ice cream parties as all too often happens in traditional schools.)

Our goal is not the child (or adult) who trudges to school (or a job) Monday through Friday, eternally looking forward to the weekend, where his life really begins. Our goal is the child who relishes in his life’s work—now as a preschooler who is forming himself through his activities, and later, as a successful, happy adult, who will have found a life purpose that fills him with contentment and joy every day of the week.

That is the goal of Montessori. It’s our job, our very own joyful, meaningful work, to help skeptical parents and educators understand that Montessori’s idea of “play as work” is the way to get there.

The Five Characteristics of Play—And of Montessori Work

Heike Larson by | Montessori Blog

PART 2 of 3 on Montessori and Play

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“The children in our schools have proved to us that their real wish is to be always at work—a thing never before suspected, just as no one had ever before noticed the child’s power of choosing his work spontaneously. Following an inner guide, the children busied themselves with something (different for each) which gave them serenity and joy.”
Dr. Maria Montessori, The Absorbent Mind (page 202)

If you observe children in a Montessori preschool program, you’ll notice that children’s “work” has all the key characteristics of play.  A very thoughtful article by Peter Grey in Psychology Today identifies five such key characteristics. Let’s look at a child’s experience in a Montessori toddler or preschool environment in light of these five characteristics:

  1. “Play is self-chosen and self-directed; players are always free to quit.” 

    As Grey’s article puts it, play is “what one wants to do, as opposed to what one is obliged to do.” Montessori fully honors this requirements: In a good Montessori preschool program, children have three hours every morning, and two hours every afternoon where they choose freely which of the hundreds of activities in the classroom they want to engage with, from using the Golden Beads to preparing a snack for their peers. There are no required group activities, no teacher telling them what to do, or when to stop an activity, or how long to keep at it. In contrast, other preschools have teachers directing board games, group singing sessions, arts and crafts activities—while these may look like “play”, in spirit they will be less playful for those children who’d rather be doing something else.“The ultimate freedom in play is the freedom to quit”, says Grey. This freedom is always honored in Montessori: When a teacher introduces a new activity to a child by inviting the child to a lesson, the child can (politely) decline to join the lesson. And after the lesson has been completed, the child can choose to immediately put the material back on the shelf. In a Montessori classroom, we “follow the child” rather than mandating any activity. In Dr. Montessori’s words:

    A teacher simply assists [the child] at the beginning to get his bearings among so many different things and teaches him the precise use of each of them, that is to say, she introduces him to the ordered and active life in the environment. But then she leaves him free in the choice and execution of his work. (The Discovery of the Child, p. 63)

  2. “Play is an activity in which means are more valued than ends.” 

    Montessori observed that children are very focused on processes, not ends. Every Montessori teacher can tell stories of children who carefully polish a mirror until it shines beautifully. The adult may move to put the mirror away, but often, the child will start the polishing process all over again! As the article on play puts it, “[t]o the degree we engage in an activity purely to achieve some end, or goal, which is separate from the activity itself, that activity is not play. … Play is an activity conducted primarily for its own sake.”While some Montessori activities in the Practical Life area are the type of things adults do as a means to an end (table washing, shoe polishing, sewing), Montessori children explore these activities in a totally self-absorbed, end-in-itself way, choosing to repeat them over and over, not to achieve a result, but to joyfully engage in and master a process.

    Again from the article: “Play often has goals, but the goals are experienced as an intrinsic part of the game… For example, constructive play (the playful building of something) is always directed toward the goal of creating the object that the player has in mind. But notice that the primary object in such play is the creation of the object, not the having of the object.” This beautifully captures the Montessori child’s activities with many of the sensorial objects—building the pink tower, arranging the red rods or the constructive triangles, fitting the knobbed cylinders in their proper spots, solving the trinomial cube—activities which the children freely choose to repeat over and over again, and which challenge them to master successively more difficult tasks.

  3. “Play is guided by mental rules.” 

    Often, when parents observe in a Montessori classroom, they are struck by the focus, the structure, the calmness of the children. It is obviously a very different environment than the chaos we typically associate with early childhood! Yet does the presence of rules mean that these children are not playing?Not according to Peter Grey: “Play is freely chosen activity, but it is not freeform activity. Play always has structure, and that structure derives from rules in the player’s mind. … The rules are not like rules of physics, nor like biological instincts, which are automatically followed. Rather, they are mental concepts that often require conscious effort to keep in mind and follow. … The main point I want to make here is that every form of play involves a good deal of self-control. … Play draws and fascinates the player precisely because it is structured by rules that the player herself or himself has invented or accepted.”

    This is so true in Montessori! It is one reason why authentic Montessori preschools encourage Montessori materials be used in accordance with their intended purpose (e.g., the knobless cylinders are meant for building, not for using as pretend trains). It’s also evident in the fact that children delight in being shown how to do simple activities, such as transferring beads with a spoon, or rolling a mat, in a very precise manner. These points of interests—rolling the mat tightly so it stands up straight; pouring water so none spills—serve as the rules that make the activity interesting—they are an essential element of playful learning, not an obstacle to it! Also note that these rules are visible to the child himself: he needs no adult to observe and correct him. Instead, the control of error is built into the material, keeping the child in charge of judging his own progress.

    Why does this matter? Says Peter Gray, “I would content that the greatest value of play’s many values for our species lies in the learning of self-control. Self-control is the essence of being human. … Everywhere, to live in human society, people must behave in accordance with conscious, shared mental conceptions of what is appropriate; and this is what children practice constantly in their play. In play, from their own desires, children practice the art of being human.”

  4. “Play is non-literal, imaginative, marked off in some way from reality.” 

    Play often involves engaging activities that are “serious yet not serious, real yet not real.” Play may involve imagination, pretending to do things, fantasy. For children, the pretending often involves acting like adults: preparing and serving a snack to the dolls, using pretend tools, pretending to sweep floors or vacuum, going on imaginative journeys to fantasy lands populated with princesses, knights and dragons.In Montessori, there are no pretend kitchens, no pretend tools, no small doll tea sets, no dress-up corner, and, at least for the early years, few if any fairy-tale books. Yet does this mean an absence of imaginative play?

    Far from it! Instead of merely pretending to prepare and serve a snack to stuffed animals, Montessori children have the opportunity to do the real thing! Instead of using a plastic knife to cut a wooden, fake banana, to serve to dolls, they use a real knife, cut up a real banana, and serve it to their real friends. They quite literally step outside of the child’s world, where they are needy and dependent, into a world that is so optimized around their capacities that, while in it, they can actually be the strong, independent people they aspire to grow into.

    Instead of escaping into a fantasy fairy land in books, the young child in Montessori purposefully gets surrounded with stories about the real world, full of the wonders of strange animals in distant places, different human experiences in different times and locations, and heroic tales that really happened. Imagination is at the forefront of these children’s experiences: they’ve never been to Africa on a safari; they’ve never climbed an icy mountain covered with glaciers; they can’t ever meet dinosaurs. Yet as they imagine these real but far-away places, they also acquire actual knowledge—which in no way negates the playfulness of their experiences. Writes Grey about the role of imagination in his own work as a writer: “The fact that part of my fantasy could possibly turn into reality does not negate its status as fantasy.”

  5. “Play involves an active, alert, but non-stressed frame of mind.” 

    Here’s an excellent, longer passage from the article, which beautifully captures the state of mind of the Montessori child:This final characteristic of play follows naturally from the other four. Because play involves conscious control of one’s own behavior, with attention to process and rules, it requires an active, alert mind. Players do not just passively absorb information from the environment, or reflexively respond to stimuli, or behave automatically in accordance with habit. Moreover, because play is not a response to external demands or immediate strong biological needs, the person at play is relatively free from the strong drives and emotions that are experienced as pressure or stress. And because the player’s attention is focused on process more than outcome, the player’s mind is not distracted by fear of failure. So, the mind at play is active and alert, but not stressed. The mental state of play is what some researchers call “flow.” Attention is attuned to the activity itself, and there is reduced consciousness of self and time. The mind is wrapped up in the ideas, rules, and actions of the game.

    When parents observe in a Montessori preschool class, they sometimes comment that the children seem so focused, so serious—with the implied concern that they aren’t exhibiting the wild, loud, impulsive actions one often witnesses when groups of young children are together. At a time when childhood is often equated with being hyper-active, emotional, out-of-control, parents worried that these focused Montessori children may be “missing out” on being children. Implied in this concern is an assumption that the children are unnaturally quiet, that they might be forced by the teachers into this state.

    Nothing could be further from the truth! Montessori children are simply deeply engaged in their chosen activities. Their minds are “active and alert, but not stressed.” They are in a flow state. As Dr. Montessori so succinctly put it, “[t]he first essential for the child’s development is concentration. The child who concentrates is immensely happy.”

To summarize: in Montessori, children are engaged for most of the day in activities that fit this very thoughtful definition of play. Montessori is playful learning!

Play vs. Work: A Wrong Alternative

Heike Larson by | Montessori Blog

PART 1 of 3 on Montessori and Play

Recently, I’ve read several articles in which articulate, well-informed commentators caution parents against emphasizing academics for preschool children, and which advocate “developmentally appropriate play-based preschools” as a better alternative.

Here are some quotes I read this year which illustrate this concern:

A parent recently asked my advice about choosing a preschool for her son. I responded with my belief that the purpose of preschool is socialization, and that a developmental ‘learn through play’ program is best.

Janet Lansbury

There must be a vision for preschool classrooms as engaging, interactive environments, full of open-ended opportunities for play as learning, and focused on early childhood learning guidelines that address the whole child’s learning and development, not just on early academics.

Laurel Bongiorno, writing in the Huffington Post

I’m sure you’ll receive many enthusiastic endorsements of Montessori preschools from satisfied parents, but my son’s play-based preschool was overwhelmingly wonderful and completely perfect for us. I think the Montessori brand name appeals to anxious parents who want to start the academic rat race at age 3.  I say save your money, and let your child play while s/he’s young.

Parent response on Berkley Parents Net

These quotes, written by intelligent individuals who obviously understand and care deeply about children’s well-being, are premised on the idea that there is a necessary trade-off between joyful play on the one hand, and rigorous academic learning on the other. On this trade-off view, parents must choose between fun and academics—between a child-led realm from which serious academic learning is mostly absent, or an adult-dominated preschool environment that strongly resembles the failed traditional school model most children enter when they turn six.

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The subsequent argument these commentators make against Montessori education is that it represents the “academic” side of the choice between academics vs. fun, and that play-based preschools are superior because they represent the “fun” side.

But is there in fact such a necessary trade-off between academics and childhood play?

Does a parent have to choose between learning and fun?

We don’t think so. In our view, the learning vs. fun trade-off is a false alternative, and in practice the most profoundly joyous childhood environment is precisely the one which best satisfies a child’s cognitive needs.

Children by nature are curious about the world. They are capable of an astounding amount of early learning when given the freedom to explore to their heart’s content, particularly in an environment of carefully prepared engaging, meaningful explorative activities. In such a setting, learning so-called academic skills, such as handwriting or arithmetic, is experienced as a playful, enjoyable activity.  The pleasure and deep satisfaction of such concentrated engagement is natural and to-be-expected because it is consistent with the actual needs of the child. Psychologically, the satisfaction derived is exactly the satisfaction that comes from play.  As Maria Montessori put it, “play is the child’s work.”

A child’s early years represent an irreplaceable period in his life—a period that biologically serves the purpose of helping him become familiar with the world around him, and capable of purposeful action in pursuit of the things that matter to him. In this time period, certain skills are learned effortlessly that, if delayed to the elementary years, unfortunately become more of struggle for many children (such as building a long attention span, developing refined fine motor control, acquiring neat handwriting, learning to read, and mastering foundational arithmetic skills). The acquisition of these life skills is not an imposition on the child—to the contrary, his whole being is oriented towards acquiring precisely such skills.

But the fact that there’s a developmental benefit to an activity does not mean an activity is not experienced as fun, fulfilling, exciting. Just as the fact that an adult’s need to work does not mean that one’s job must be drudgery, so too a child’s need to grow does not mean growth must be listless. Many adults—indeed, the most fulfilled adults—approach their work as an exciting, satisfying activity, and do not “live for the weekends”. In a Montessori classroom, we don’t assume that activities that have long-term utility must be empty of joy.

Many educators struggle with this apparent chasm between joyfulness, and academic rigor and structure. Progressive educators, following Dewey, usually err on the side of making learning “fun”, even if it means sacrificing a sequenced, comprehensive, rigorous curriculum. Traditional educators, in contrast, excel at defining what academic skills and content a child is to master, but often rely heavily on extrinsic motivators, like grades, class parties or the threat of a trip to the principal’s office, to entice children to do the dreary drilling needed to achieve their goals.

Montessorians need not accept this false alternative. Our vision is not learning vs. enjoyment, but an integrated, joyous learning. Dr. Montessori’s unique method of allowing the child freedom to choose in a carefully prepared environment is the revolution that enables parents to have their cake and eat it, too—to ensure their child will stay curious, joyful and intrinsically motivated to learn, and at the same time master challenging and advanced academic skills and content, from preschool onward.

Let’s spread the word: If this is possible, why would anyone settle for less?

Summertime and the Montessori Child

Charlotte Kroger by | Montessori Blog
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For children who are at home during the summer break, parents will wish to work diligently with slowing the pace of life.  Children will savor the leisurely passage of time in which they can relish individual choices, uninterrupted play, ample rest and sleep, unhurried meals and unplugged screens.  Here are just a few ideas of how a child can fill her long lovely summer days and return to school refreshed, nourished and eager:

  • Read beautiful, appropriate books (remember, the school has book lists to offer).  For the older Children’s House child, begin a chapter book that will develop into a repetitive ritual that she will look forward to and remember with warmth and happiness.  Have long leisurely conversations about the characters, the places visited, the sights and smells.  Provide large blank sheets of paper and crayons or watercolors and invite the child to illustrate parts of the story she remembers. Collect these into a handmade book of illustrations.
  • Provide long extended periods of outside play with freedom to construct, dig, shovel and explore to heart’s content.  Resist staging and choosing for the child and instead, encourage the blossoming of his own imaginative play efforts.
  • Do not be afraid of boredom, for this is the passage to imaginative, interesting activity of the child’s own choosing.
  • Resist the need to provide a playmate or to be a playmate for your child on a regular basis, but instead, honor her ability to find her own entertainment and source of activity.  Play-dates are fine for an occasional get-together, but children really do enjoy their own company when given the opportunity to figure it out and enact upon their own ingenuity.  The child’s play will reflect what is going on in her world, for this is the source of her imaginings.
  • Try to develop a schedule with shared responsibilities by the adults so that the children are left with large blocks of uninterrupted play (which is their summer ‘work’).  Shopping is really an adult activity and few children derive any enrichment from the ordeal of being taken from store to store.
  • Border a portion of the garden/yard for the child to tend with appropriate size tools and gear.  Give just enough guidance and instruction so that she will know how to use the tools and how to tend her section.  Be friendly with error as she learns this craft. Also, a small portion of the yard can be cordoned for digging exploration and the collecting of objects found.  Provide a tray and space to store these treasures.  The goal is that these activities will be something the child wishes to return to often and engage in at will.  Small creatures/insects that are encountered are respected by observing them in their natural habitat.  Books are read as encounters are made.  Let it be an organic development.
  • Include practical life experiences in your child’s day that will provide ritual, a marking of passage of time and a sense of responsibility in family life:
    • Sweeping designated areas inside and/or out
    • Washing windows with a spray bottle of vinegar water and wiping them clean with newspaper
    • Sorting and loading laundry into the washing machine
    • Folding laundry together
    • Setting the table, clearing the table after a meal
    • Helping peel vegetables for dinner
    • Ironing (older children) the napkins and small cloths (under the watchful eye of an adult, using a mildly warm small iron)
    • Making the bed together
    • Culling through toys and deciding what to discard and what to keep
    • Washing shoes, especially the outdoor play shoes that will probably need refreshing

A few short day trips that the children can participate in the planning and executing of the events can result in happy moments for summertime:

  • A visit to the Austin Children’s Museum
  • A visit to McKinney Falls State Park, with a basket lunch prepared
  • A visit to the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center (skip the shop and focus on the natural environment)
  • An hour of play and lunch on the grounds of a local park/playground, particularly if within walking/biking distance

IMG_3051-largeOccasionally a parent will ask guidance about working with their child on academic work during the summer break, mostly out of concern for the child’s ability to sustain previous learning.  We encourage the parent to recognize that the child needs the balance offered by a summer of relaxation and reflection. It is in the reflection that true, deep- seated learning takes place. Just as in the classroom the guide can observe children engaged in reflection following an engrossing, focused work (be it washing a table with vigor and precision or exploring the operations of addition with the stamp game), and she will respect this moment, children will use their summer down-time to reflect on what they have already achieved in the school year.  This will be observed in their desire to do a practical life activity spontaneously (one mother related to me that her child, immediately after breakfast, collected his bucket and sponge and cleaned the refrigerator and repeated this exercise several times during the summer), or a desire to write a letter or a word or a story, depending upon his development, or work some simple math combinations.  I tell parents that it is fine to follow the child’s lead in these activities, to answer the child’s questions (‘how is number five written?” or ‘how is the word kitten written”- hint: we sound it out ‘k i t i n’).  Having papers of various colors and sizes, along with crayons (and pencils for those children who have been introduced to the metal inset work), available in a container and accessible to children for spontaneous work and creation will go a long way in providing them an opportunity to put into concrete form their reflections of previous learning.  Spontaneous reflection of this nature will allow the child space to engage his mind academically without the pressures of additional formal lessons.  I also like to remind parents that when we write in front of the children, we use beautiful, well-formed cursive letters.

Sharing the summertime break with extended family and friends offers not only time to catch up on each other’s lives and experiences but also often provides challenges on how to continue on the path one has thought through with intention and care that the child is not exposed to media content or entertainment inappropriate to her development.  We accept other’s choices of both lifestyle and family values but remain dedicated to our child’s developmental stage and needs of rest, appropriate nourishment and contact with the outdoor world.

Whenever the families we love and long to spend time with have differing lifestyles, we must be the ones to consider alternatives that are thoughtfully offered.  Perhaps we can research and offer a vacation spot that is equal-distant from each group and plan to rendezvous because there is a wealth of outdoor environment of woods for walking, water for swimming, lawn for play, places to set up lunch in the open air and enjoy long, lazy get-togethers while over- seeing the combined brood of children – and the media has been left behind.

If the extended family is local and just a drive away, perhaps we can take the initiative to organize several play days for whole groups outdoors in one of the local parks.  This could be a well-thought out plan of energetic games balanced by restful periods of portable meals and quiet lying about on blankets, under umbrellas that shade the sun.  Book readings and quiet conversation (always being conscious of the children who will be absorbing every word we utter) after an energetic walk or game are the stuff of memories, especially if ‘ritualized’ over a one or two week period with the people most loved in one’s life.  It is true that great thought and energy will have to go into books to take (appropriate real stories about real life), food to pack (share nourishing, tempting recipes with other family members and share the menu) and games appropriate to the children’s development, but this will form the basis of the time spent together.  I vividly remember childhood family gatherings in the summer in the piney woods of a Louisiana park.  There were all generations of family members, many stories to hear, running and hiding games under the watchful supervision of the adults, luscious Louisiana watermelon and homemade sandwiches to eat.  Do extended families get together like this anymore – away from the in-doors and into the ‘wilds’ of the outdoors?

As the ones who have the vision for their child’s development, we must plan for opportunities to gather with the ones we love AND accept the leadership in planning, recruiting support and providing for pleasurable re-connections with family and friends that do not exhaust our children or unravel our best laid plans for their development.

Locating and matching the perfect summer rendezvous for your child might take time and planning but your child is worth all of the effort.  For us, the adults, the summer is fleeting, but for children, it is a world unto itself that stretches out forever, until, magically, someone says it is time for school again.  Your child’s guide will be ready to receive a well-rested, well-nourished child who has developed her sense of self a bit more through the leisurely passage of summer activity.

What You Need to Know About Montessori and Play

David Ayer by | Montessori Blog

Dr. Angeline Lillard, professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia, author of Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius, as well as several academic articles on Montessori, and Montessori speaker and advocate, has a new article in the American Journal of Play: Playful Learning and Montessori Education.  It’s long, dense but readable, and bristling with objectivity, academic citations, and peer-reviewed research.

©MariaMontessori.com

Because the world of public education depends on academic studies and research, the article has all kinds of implications for the expansion of Montessori Primary to many more children.  It also offers a lot of theory and data for conversations with curious or skeptical non-academics.  This one should be on the coffee table in the admissions office at every Montessori school out there.

I encourage readers to read take the time to read the whole thing. Here’s the executive summary:

  • Play, as opposed to didactic learning, is a big deal in the world of Early Child Education.
  • Montessori has been generally considered anti-play (when it is considered at all).
  • Which seems strange, since freely chosen, open-ended activity is what we do!
  • In fact, Montessori has many of the elements identified as part of playful learning (to wit, structure, objects, interactive lessons, free choice, peer interactions, intrinsic rewards, and fun).
  • What Montessori doesn’t do is pretend play, such as dress-up, toy kitchens, and fantasy.
  • When you look at the research, the evidence for pretend play (as opposed to play in general) isn’t all that strong one way or the other.
  • Consequently, we don’t really know if adding pretend play to Montessori environments would help or hurt.
  • But we can look to see if the other elements of “playful learning Montessori style” is helpful to children’s learning.
  • This can be problematic because Montessori is practiced under a range of interpretations.
  • But if we control for certain elements of “high-fidelity” Montessori, we see improved social and cognitive outcomes.

That’s a very condensed summary of a thorough and detailed article.  Why is this so important?

Dr. Lillard bridges two worlds that don’t communicate much or understand each other.  Montessorians often don’t get why we’re not more widely adopted, especially in the pubic sphere.  Academics often don’t seem to ‘get’ Montessori, or find it relevant to their work.  There are two reasons for this state of affairs.

One reason we have stayed on the sidelines is the play question. The academic world sees us as didactic rather than play oriented.  But ‘play-based’ is the gold standard in early child education.  The article lays that perception on the table and takes it apart point by point.  It give Montessorians a way to talk about, and answer, the kinds of questions outsiders will ask.  Consider handing this to the smart and skeptical parent who wants to know “what the research says.” It also opens the question of pretend play on both ends, challenging Montessorians to consider our biases, and asking the academy to put up some solid research on why it belongs in schools in the first place.

(Recently D. Lillard has taken on exactly that question.  She has an article questioning the research supporting pretend play, followed by a fascinating exchange of comments, in the Psychological Bulletin 2013, 139/1)

More generally, the world of public policy, where funding and curriculum decisions for schools, Head Start, and early childhood education programs are made, depends on peer-reviewed, quantifiable, replicable research. Until recently, there hasn’t been a lot of this.  That’s because of selection bias (it’s hard to get a control group of families who would have chosen Montessori but couldn’t) and because the topic has seemed so nebulous—how can researchers know what they’re measuring when they measure Montessori?  What Lillard does here is outline a research framework—defining Montessori, translating our practices into technical, researchable topics, and laying out enticing possibilities for further work.

Dr. Lillard told me that she wrote this paper primarily for an academic audience.  But it carries a challenge for Montessorians as well. There are legitimate issues around measurement and testing, to be sure, but in the end it doesn’t matter.  That is the language they speak where the decisions are made, and if we want to bring our voice to the conversation, we would do well to learn to speak it as well.  And if we can tell our story in language they can understand, we will get our story out to many more children and adults.  If not, we will remain a mostly exclusive niche.

Montessori and Play

Marcy Hogan by | Montessori Blog
© MariaMontessori.com

As a mother of a child approaching preschool, I’ve noticed the conversation about how to choose a preschool and what type to go with popping up more and more around me.  Parents debate the merits of academic vs free-play schools, Montessori vs Waldorf, etc.  I’m happy to offer up my advice and insights on the benefits of Montessori, and also am curious to hear what others’ and experiences are.  Recently I’ve noticed several people criticize Montessori as not allowing the children to “play” enough, of being too structured rather than letting them fully explore their creativity and imagination.

At first I’m taken aback by this perception of Montessori schools.  Montessori gives children such great opportunities to be creative!  But then I thought about it some more, and I think I see the problem– children in a Montessori school don’t “play” the way we’re used to seeing children play.  Children tend to play pretend, to make believe stories, etc.  It is true, a Montessori classroom will have very little of that.  And as more and more studies come out confirming the importance of free play in childhood and in children’s development and learning, I can see parents being “turned off” from Montessori because of this.

But, the thing is– while one may not see “play” in a Montessori classroom, the spirit of play is very much still there.

What is it that children are doing when they play?  They are practicing.  They are experimenting.  They are discovering.   A child playing with a toy will turn it this way and that, make it go here and there, do the same action over and over, then try something completely different just to see what will happen.

Now imagine a young child working with the pink tower.  What does this child do?  She practices stacking the tower as her teacher has shown her.  She experiments with different configurations for the cubes.  What happens if she places the smallest cube on the bottom, then the largest on top?  What about making two towers?  What will they look like if she lines them up horizontally on the rug, instead?  She discovers cause and effect, relationships in dimension, lessons in gravity.

(As an aside, when I was going through my training we had to spend several hours a week working with the materials, just as the children do, to become fully familiar with them.  One of my favorite materials to work with were the constructive triangles.  It seemed no matter how long I worked with them, or how many times I thought I had exhausted every possible combination and shape I could make with them, there was always something new I would then discover that I hadn’t thought of before.)

One comment I heard recently was about how you won’t see dolls or play kitchens in a Montessori classroom (as proof that pure play does not exist there).  I think this is another very interesting distinction.  Children often play pretend because they want to be part of our adult world, but can’t be.  They want to cook in the kitchen, sweep the floors, and wash and fold clothes like we do.  But for most children those opportunities are not there (what if they hurt themselves?  What if they mess up the laundry I just spent half an hour folding?), so instead we buy them toys to mimic these activities.

In Montessori, instead of mimicking adult activities, we give the children the chance to actually do them.  Many Montessori schools (budget-allowing) have child-sized kitchens where the children will actually cook and bake meals and treats for their classmates.  Children have the chance to plant and tend to their own gardens, hand wash towels and cloths used in the classroom, set the tables up for lunch, etc.  There’s no need to pretend when you can actually do the real thing.

So yes, it’s true, you won’t see play kitchens in a Montessori classroom, nor will you see children playing pirates or princesses.  Instead, you will see children who are engaging in the very activities most children only get to “pretend” to do, and using their creativity and imagination to explore the materials in ways that often surprise even the most experienced teachers.