Montessori method: let’s put in order!

Teaching children to keep their spaces and games in order is not so difficult, with some small tricks

The order to children likes, like adults. The little ones, like the big ones, do not like to be in the midst of disorder, because The order of the external environment is functional to the development of the inner orderfacilitating concentration and consequently learning. In an orderly environment (at home as in school) we work better.

So why are the bedrooms often in disorder? Why do parents chase children daily to arrange their games and spaces? What is important is encourage the reorganization of the environments immediatelyfrom the beginning of life, and make the reorganization part of the activity.

There are strategies that can help children in the development of this competence: first of all the preparation of the environment.

The adult: the keeper of the environment

Maria Montessori (Read our in -depth analysis on his educational philosophy) described the adult as the keeper of the environmentthe one who takes care of offering the child an attractive environment, suitable for his degree of development, reflecting his interests, and where the child can find answers to his requests for growth. Everything present in the environment must have a reason, a precise purpose. What is not needed must not be there.

Here the adult, be it a parent or master, must take care of the child’s life environment considering that the material with which the child works is the food of his mind. The criteria for setting up the bedroom should be: I choose, I propose, or suitable what is already there, so that it is useful, beautiful and interesting.

The less it is better

Often the children’s bedrooms are too dense with material (we talked about the application of the Montessori method at home in a specific article), and this condition of saturation does not facilitate the reorganization, on the contrary. It is therefore important free the space from everything that is not neededis not adequate for the age and interests of children or, at this precise moment, is not attractive.

The first action to be made is choose:

1. decrease the amount of material: Few cars, reduce the number of buildings, the number of books, puppets, dolls that instead of always being all present, can rotate
2. remove from the environment what is broken, ruinedwithout batteries or lack of parts
3. arrange on sight What the child at this precise development interests the child, struggling in a closed wardrobe what he doesn’t like, is too simple or still too complex (and therefore not interesting)
4. Often it is submerged by gifts, but not all that you receive must be placed in the child’s environment. We could adopt the rule that For everything I introduce in space, I take away another
5. The material can rotate: delete a game that, then, after a few months or week, reintegration
6. choose A precise place for everything. This space must be fixed, at hand and adequate because the child always knows where to find it and where to store it
7. have activities or visible games. If the child has to overthrow a box to find the desired object, or move material to achieve what he wants, it is easy that he does not succeed and does not want to tidy up all the amount of overturned or moved material. If the child wants the red car, he must be able to find it only looking for it with his gaze and then knowing exactly where he took it. Removeding a car is much easier than tidying up a whole box of objects
8. set each activity within a containerso that the child has a space delimited within which there is everything you need to carry out a certain activity. For example, for the activity of the drawing I take a nice box inside which I put: a few sheets, a container with a dozen colored pencils, a temporary, a rubber. So the child, when he decides to draw, can take the box (which is equipped with everything you need), carry out the activity e Then store the little material used inside the container.

Example

Small children need to see us continually tidy up. When we play together with a child just over year, show him a material chosen by the environment, let him handle him until his interest is exhausted and then We show where the material must be placed (putting it back) before moving on to another activity.
In this way the child gets used to the reorganizationrecognizing it as final phase of the activity itself.

Collaborate on the reorganization

At some point of development, usually around 24 months, the child can start helping us at this phase of reorganizing the material. After working together we can ask The collaboration of the child in the reorganization of the objects used, dealing with it together.

This reorganization support is fundamental Why The child does not live with frustration this very important phasebut as a necessary step to proceed with the choice of a new activity. If we let the environment be saturated with disorder objects, requesting participation in the reorganization becomes extremely difficult. If, on the other hand, for each material taken it also deals with its reorganization, it becomes an accessible task.

Demand the reorganization

If the previous passages have been conducted calmly, patience and love, transmitting to the child the value of the reorganization, or as an enrichment of the experiences conducted, as a care of the material used and the life environment, it is easy that the child is used to the reorganization, that he does not do it for duty and with difficulty but that it is for him A habitual and obvious action And that the room in disorder is an exception and not the rule (in this regard, also read our article on Montessori beds, in which we talk about how to encourage the child’s habit to redo the bed).

The child of the child in disorder must ask me questions: the environment I am offering him is suitable for his degree of development? To your interests? How can I make the environment more easily accessible and therefore reordered? I transmitted to my child the reason why it is important to reorder, what is the value of the reorganization? My educational action can start from these questions.

Some photos are taken from the blog www.howemontessori.com