Tag: First Plane

This is part 4 of our series on observation! This week, we’ll take a quick look at the where and when to observe! If you’re just joining us for the first time–welcome! You may want to go back and give parts 1, 2, and 3 a read.

This should be a pretty short and easy post to write, because ultimately, as long as the children and the environment are safe, there is not really a wrong place or time to observe. This is the beauty of normalizing observation–for the children and the adult. When observation becomes part of the routine, a known quantity, it stops feeling like an inconvenience—so the possibilities for where and when to observe seem to crop up everywhere. I hope that maybe this post will inspire you to look for the little spaces you want (or need!) to do observation in your life.

Where should I observe?

EVERYWHERE! Seriously. As mentioned above, as long as everyone is safe, it is a fine place to step back from the situation and observe.

Observe in every space your child spends time in at home. Bathroom, dining room, kitchen, bedroom, living room. Observe the spaces they spend the most time in. Observe the ones they spend the least time in. Look at those observations next to one another. Does it help you understand what one space might offer that another lacks?

Observe your child at the playground and extracurricular activities. Think about what you can find out about your child by watching them in an environment that might be outside of their normal comfort zone. Do they participate in classes? How do they interact? Do they prefer one playground to another? Does watching carefully tell you more fully why they have this preference?

Observe your child while visiting family and friends. Probably these spaces aren’t perfectly prepared. How does your child adapt? Perhaps their spaces are prepared but in a different way. What does your child seem to like about it? Dislike about it? How does this change their engagement with their environment and the people in it?

If you are a parent who has a child that attends a Montessori school, ask about observation opportunities! Think of the parents who never have the opportunity to watch their child in action or to see what their next classroom experience will be like. Start in your child’s classroom. Make time to observe classrooms at the next level before your child’s transition — or just when you are trying to decide what is the best next step for your family. Or when you feel uncertain about the trajectory of the work your child is doing in primary. Or when you want to know: what does Montessori look like when a child is 6? 9? 12? 15? 18?

So we know that we can observe everywhere. But when?

Start literally whenever you have time at home. Steal 5 minutes to sip your coffee and jot down notes. A good time to start is when the child is independently engaged in work. Sometimes the best way to keep the child engaged is to make yourself unavailable, so look busy about your observation work and watch. This isn’t the only valuable time to observe, though. Take time to observe when your child is fatigued, wandering, or dysregulated. Obviously the safety rules apply here, but watching at tough times like these–which frequently occur during transitions, can give you keen insight on how to help ease the transitions and make them smoother.

We struggled with bedtime for a long time in our house. Observing my child in this transition let me know that they needed a looooong, slooooow transition, that started immediately after an early dinner. I had been trying to shorten the routine because it always seemed like they were dragging their feet, but observation told me that what looked like them not wanting to go into the transition was actually them trying to lengthen the time we spent quietly connecting with each other in the evenings. Now that we’ve changed our bedtime routine, the evening isn’t always perfect, but this simple observation, which in retrospect seems SO obvious, was a game changer for us.

The truth is, you often need to observe MOST when it feels like it is the hardest to observe. So try to step back in those moments and gather information about why they feel so challenging. Sit on your hands. Bite your lip. Let the mess happen. Gather information, insight, and clarity. Allow room for innovation and problem solving. Trust your child.

If your child attends a Montessori school, or simply if you are interested in knowing more about one, call the front office or ask about the best way to schedule an observation.

Typically schools allow some time for the children to settle into their routine at the beginning of the school year before they begin observations. I always found October to be a great time to observe! An observation is a more in-depth experience than a tour, and it should be okay to ask to observe as a part of the application process. The many schools I have observed at and worked in often offered morning observation slots, especially for Primary or Toddler, but if you have an older child or are observing at the elementary or adolescent levels, afternoon observations may be available, too.

These practical points wrap up our primer! I will finish our series on observation next week with some observation challenges–and I’ll share the results from my own observations, too. Until then: talk a little bit less, breathe a little bit more, and be watchful. –K

 

Interested in reading more about Montessori and observation? Here are a few of my favorite articles, blogs, and videos on the topic:

 

The Kavanaugh Report: Observation and the Prepared Adult

Montessori Guide: Observation

Montessori Northwest: “Suggestions and Remarks Upon Observing Children” by Dr. Maria Montessori

The Montessori Notebook: Some things to observe

Montessori Services: The Art of Observation

This week, we’ll take a dive into what to look for when you are observing! These suggestions apply whether you’re observing in the home or in the classroom. Today’s post marks the midpoint of our series on observation — You can find the previous posts here and here.

“Maaaama, what’s that?” my three and a half year old asks. They aren’t pointing, just looking in a direction. My eyes scan the shelf that they are looking at.

“What’s….what? Can you point to what you are talking about?” They gesture to the bottle of mouthwash. “Oh, are you asking what is in the bottle?” I ask.

“No! I know it is mouthwash. What is THAT?” they say, climbing the step stool and gesturing to the small seal of approval on the front.

“Oh, that’s a seal! It tells you that it is approved by doctors and dentists.”

My three-year-old sighs, annoyed. “NO, mama. WHAT IS THAAAAAAT? With the wings, and the spiral.” They gesture once again, this time to something within the seal. It is a teeny tiny caduceus. “CADUCEUS!” they chant triumphantly, after I tell them. Then they trot away.

When you’re trying to observe children, it can sometimes feel like this interaction with my three-year-old: They had an agenda, but I didn’t know what I was looking for. Shooting in the dark, I got there eventually, but MY GOODNESS it would have gone faster if I’d had a little more… direction. That’s what I’d like to lay out for you now: let me offer some direction for your observations by discussing what we are looking for when we observe. This will pair nicely with the challenges I hope to issue during week 5, so I hope it’ll stay fresh in your mind.

Kari, WHAT AM I LOOKING FOR WHEN I OBSERVE?!

I want to start by saying: this is not a conclusive list of all the things a person can observe. These are just the things I feel are most widely applicable and easily identifiable.

As a guest in the Casa or Primary prepared environment, your job is really to watch for the hallmarks of Montessori; that is, what makes this environment prepared? How do the children exist within this prepared environment?

–Look for independence. Take note of the many things children are able to do without adult intervention or aid. Look for situations where independence may lead to perseverance, or the overcoming of a difficult task. Watch how the children problem solve and mediate.

–Look for different levels of concentration: Children are still developing their ability to concentrate, so remember that true and sustained concentration is a point of arrival. How do you see concentration manifested in the environment? How is it protected — by the environment, the other children, and the guide? How long do you see children concentrating for? What kinds of work seem to foster concentration? It may be that they are concentrated on a challenging equation, or on solving a problem together, on a conversation they are having or simply on table scrubbing. All are valuable!

–Look at socialization, and the benefits of the multi-age classroom: See which activities seem to inspire and develop social behaviors. Notice the interactions of children with peers their age, and also those older and younger than them. Are there examples of leadership? How do children problem solve when adults are unavailable? How does the span of ages change the avenues children have to learn? And finally:

–Look at the different ways children are learning: You might see two children working together on Golden Beads; a child sitting on their own doing a puzzle map; children working on the chalkboard. You might see someone focused deeply on the up-and-down motion of a needle through burlap; the effort needed to push the apple slicer clean through the apple; the successful portage of a bucket filled with water. There may be varying degrees of focus, and various modes through which the children are using their hands to manipulate the materials. You may also see a child observing a lesson they’d like to have in the future–by watching, children absorb, and this is an important part of learning for the young child.

All of this work, practical, abstract, conversational, or meditative, is a part of the child’s process of self-development, and it’s often only when we stop to take the time out to observe the children that we recognize it as such.

If you are observing as the prepared adult (teacher or assistant, homeschool parent), there are some additional tasks you might undertake:

–Look for adult interventions: How often are you (or other adults) intervening in the child’s work? Take note of when, and why! Additionally, you can take note of how often the child is coming to an adult and why. How does this intervention (or lack of intervention) seem to aid or hinder concentration and independence? (Y’all, this one is easy to overlook but it is SO POWERFUL.)

-Look for order and disorder: How are order or disorder created in the environment, by the children or the adults? What seems to happen right before disorder? How is order restored? How do children respond to either state? Take note of the role of the adult in the maintenance of order or the restoration of order, and see whether it seems to affect the process.

-Look for how the child handles fatigue: What does the child do when they are experiencing mental or physical fatigue? How does it affect the flow of their activity? How does it affect the other children in the environment? It can be different for every child. Note how they cope with and overcome fatigue.

-Look at the way the child handles error: Is the child friendly with error? How do they react when they discover an error, on behalf of themselves or of others? How do they discover and correct error–is it independent, or does an adult need to point it out?

-Look at emotions, temper, and will: How does the child handle their emotions when they rise? How do they handle the emotions of others? How do they utilize their will, positively and negatively, to make things happen around them? If you have multiple children, how do their personalities ebb and flow in the environment in this regard?

-Look for the way a child shows engagement and interest : What does the child’s face look like when they are deeply engaged? How does their body language change? How does the child’s work or effort change when an activity is well-aligned with their sensitive periods or interests?

These questions are a springboard to help get you started. Observation is like a muscle–use it, and strengthen it, and each time it will get easier and your ability to use this feedback to distill helpful information about how to adjust yourself and your environment to better serve the child.

If you’ve practiced observing the things I’ve outlined above and you want to go deeper, research Work Curves.

Dr. Montessori describes Work Curves at length in Spontaneous Activity in Education (Side Note: This link goes to a full, FREE eBook of the text at Project Gutenberg. There is a paperback edition of this original version available for purchase here. The edition I use is titled: “The Advanced Montessori Method,” which can be purchased here).

Breaking down this idea would be a standalone blog post, but briefly: A work curve is a way to graph a child’s engagement with the materials and the environment, and the development of their concentration over time. It’s quantifiable data that can only be gathered through observation. Montessori lays out how to interpret the patterns in this data to gain insight about how a child’s psyche is developing — it’s pretty amazing stuff.

Ultimately, observation is a way to know the child more intimately. How special is that? To be able to look back at your own notes; things the child has said or done, and see there the small way they share each day part of the secret of the child with you. When you think about what you want to observe, think about how you’d like to more deeply understand and engage your child. That will guide you in the right direction. Maria Montessori describes the power of true observation like this::

“At first the teacher will say, ‘I have seen the child as he ought to be, and found him better than I could have ever supposed.’ This is what it means to understand infancy. It is not enough to know that this child is called John, that his father is a carpenter; the teacher must know and experience in her daily life the secret of childhood. Through this she arrives not only at a deeper knowledge but at a new kind of love which does not become attached to the individual person, but to that which lies in the hidden darkness of this secret. When the children show her their real natures, she understands perhaps for the first time, what love really is. And this revelation transforms her also. It is a thing that touches the heart, and little by little it changes people.”

(p. 282, The Absorbent Mind)

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