Читать книгу A Montessori Mother онлайн

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What could be these “games” which so absorbed these children, far too young for any possibility of pretense on their part? Moving with the unhampered, unobserved ease which is the rule in a Montessori schoolroom, I began walking about, looking more closely at what the children were holding, and I could have laughed at the simplicity of many of the means which accomplished the apparent miracle of self-imposed order and discipline before me ... if I had not been ready to cry at my own stupidity for not thinking of them myself. One little boy about three and a half years old had been intent on some operation ever since we had entered the room, and even now as I drew near his little table and chair, he only glanced up for an instant’s smile without stopping the action of his fingers. I leaned over him, hoping that the device which so held his attention was not too complicated for my inexperienced, unpedagogical mind to take in. He was holding a light wooden frame about eighteen inches square, on which were stretched two pieces of cotton cloth, meeting down the middle like the joining of a garment. On one of these edges was a row of buttonholes and on the other a row of large bone buttons. The child was absorbed in buttoning and unbuttoning those two pieces of cloth.