In and Out of the Closet

TODAY'S ACTIVITIES

• "Threading" Toothpicks
• Pouring
• Bottles and Tops

Let me begin today with a brief description of the structure of our school. This necessitates an even briefer description of our apartment; in a word, it's small. We have one 30' x 15' room that comprises our living area, dining room, romper room, mud room, library, home theater, yoga studio and workshop, with a cute little kitchen off in one corner. My son's bedroom is adjacent to this "great room" and my husband and I sleep in a loft-like room situated directly above Parker's room. The books I read in preparation for homeschooling all recommended setting aside a particular area in the home to use for school. Ha. Maybe if we lived in that villa the Real Housewives of NYC graced when they visited St. John, maybe then I could relegate an actual room for our homeschool. As it is, I found even just demarcating a small area of our apartment implausible. I'm not complaining about the size of our home. I love our apartment; I love where it's located, I love our neighbors/landlords, I love our views, I even love the funky rattan furniture with which it came furnished. I bring up this issue of needing to figure out where we could/should/would conduct school because it seemed unfair for me to ask my

son to suddenly change from play mode to student mode the minute I said, "Time for school!" when his surroundings would change nary a bit. So what to do? In one of my how-to-homeschool books ("Teaching Montessori in the Home" by Elizabeth G. Hainstock), the author advocates keeping the school materials put away, taking them out only when it's school time. "Unless [the child] is taught that they are intended for a specific time and purpose, he will lose respect for them as teaching devices." This idea that school equipment should not be constantly at hand, right alongside toys and other miscellaneous household items, really resonates with me. Plus, it sort of solves the we-have-no-nook-for-our-school problem; the "school" stays in a closet, coming out only when it's time for "class." But how to handle (by which I mean, facilitate) Parker's mental transition from play time to school time when the only manifest change he sees will be his mom rolling a bookcase of stuff out of his bedroom closet? Here's the idea I came up with: ring a (school)bell! We have this cute little silver bell that's actually my mom's but somehow migrated from her home to ours; perfect, right? So that's what we'll do to bookend our school sessions. We started today. Parker really likes to ring the bell. Are you surprised?

Today I introduced two new activities ("threading" toothpicks, bottles and tops) and we revisited pouring. During the course of each school session, we will revisit at least one activity presented on a prior day. The materials from previous days' activities sit on the school shelves (those ones I dragged out of the closet) and Parker gets to choose what he wants to work with. His freedom to choose allows him to become accustomed to taking the initiative with regards to his learning. And, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, one of the main aims of the Montessori method is to engender a sense of--altogether now!--independence in children. Parker wanted to revisit pouring this morning, which I took as a sign that my insane interference during school yesterday didn't permanently deter him from this whole learning thing. With his mother muzzled (figuratively, at least), he did really well pouring rice and after ten minutes or so asked, "Can I pour water now?" He did OK pouring water from the pitcher into the cups; pouring water out of the cups back into the pitcher posed more of a challenge. His spills enabled him to practice using a sponge, a skill he took to with seemingly instinctive ease (which is not at all shocking since he sees his mother scrubbing away with a sponge day in and day out). I did have to explain to him that the sponge needs to be wrung out occasionally; squeezing water out of sponges is now his new favorite pastime. He got a little overzealous emptying the cups, shaking them vigorously in an attempt to get every last drop of water out. Wet porcelain (er, glazed ceramic) can get pretty slick and a cup slipped out of his hands and broke. And now my son knows the meaning of the phrase, "handle with care!"

Postscript: Just in case you're wondering, when the cup broke, I remained calm, using the opportunity to explain to Parker why we need to be careful with certain types of things (e.g., ceramic cups, glasses, iPhones)--namely, they break. We bought the 12-item set of cups and saucers at Cost-U-Less (the Caribbean Costco) on St. Thomas for $9.99. I was not exactly crushed to see one cup become a casualty of school.