Sense of Order
In a Montessori classroom, the final step in a child’s cycle of activity is cleaning up the work and putting it back where it belongs. I’ve had parents of three-year-olds in my class who were quite surprised to hear how proficiently their child could put their work back on the same shelf where they found it and roll their rug and return it to the rug basket. One would think that a room full of young children would be a disaster at the end of the day (and trust me, we do have those days), but for the most part the children take care of the classroom and make sure everything is in its proper place. “But why doesn’t my child do this at home?” I have been asked. After doing some thinking about it, I have decided that the main reason is probably too much stuff. For everything to be in its proper place, it first needs to have a specific place where it belongs. This is incredibly hard to do when a child has 500 toys. Perhaps an exaggeration, but I remember the daunting task of cleaning...