I went to observe in Grace’s class yesterday and it was really awesome to have the opportunity to watch her in the environment, as well as see how some of the work material fits together.

Grace’s day went something like this,

Play outside. Group time (including some misinformation about thunder from a book). Snack time! (with some mild consternation over someone taking her seat, as there is limited snack table seating). To the culture room to look at a book at glaciers. Let’s water the plants! Gather watering cans and off to get water. Return with a friend and filled watering cans. Repeat….quite a few times until everything is watered. Wash up a practical life task (a shoe which gets covered with toothpaste using a toothbrush, then polished off with newspaper, and then washed). Clean up after the washing.

Washing up the practical life task

Jump on the trampoline for five minutes. Inside and to the work task area. Work on the teens board with Pauline, while demonstrating it to her friends. It was cool to see the hierarchical material and bead stair are used to form the numbers.

Doing the teens board

Treasure hunt! Find the correct number of items on a sheet from the garden (stones, sticks, leaves, petals). Bring that all in and then stick them to a piece of paper to form a garden collage.

Sticking down the treasure hunt items

Paint a picture. Do a practical life task (moving beads between bowls with a spoon). Kindermusik! Tapping sticks together, swaying with scarves, castanets, learn a bit about piano’s and Johan Sebastian Bach (the take home for the kids on Bach seemed to be that he was fat and should have eaten a bit less). End of day group time. Home (but always the “just two minutes” of playing outside first).

I met with Janine (the head directress) last week, and one of the things she said was that Grace is always busy, “she is like a busy little ant around the classroom,” and it is certainly true – at least on the day I visited. Grace was just always busy (in a productive way) with something.

It was a really lovely experience for me to see her, and to see how a Montessori class works.