Читать книгу A Montessori Mother онлайн

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In the Casa dei Bambini this is quite different. Because it is their home and not a school, the hours are very long, practically all the day being spent there. The children have the responsibility not only for their own persons, but for the care of their Home. They arrive early in the morning and betake themselves at once to the small washstands with pitchers and bowls of just the size convenient for them to handle. Here they make as complete a morning toilet as anyone could wish, washing their faces, necks, hands, and ears (and behind the ears!), brushing their teeth, making manful efforts to comb their hair, cleaning their finger-nails with scrupulous care, and helping each other with fraternal sympathy. It is astonishing (for anyone who had the illusion that she knew child-nature) to note the contrast between the vivid purposeful attention they bestow on all these processes when they are allowed to do them for themselves, and the bored, indifferent impatience we all know so well when it is our adult hands which are doing all the work. The big ones (of five and six) help the little ones, who, eager to be “big ones” in their turn, struggle to learn as quickly as possible how to do things for themselves.