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After the morning toilet of the children is finished, it is the turn of the schoolroom. The fresh-faced, shining-eyed children scatter about the big room, with tiny brushes and dust-pans and little brooms. They attack the corners where dust lurks, they dust off all the furniture with soft cloths, they water the plants, they pick up any litter which may have accumulated, they learn the habit of really examining a room to see if it is in order or not. One natural result of this daily training in close observation of a room is a much greater care in the use of it during the day, a result the importance of which can be certified by any mother who has to “pick up” after a family of small children.

After the room is fresh and clean, the “order of exercises” is very flexible, varying according to circumstances, the weather, the desire of the children. They may perhaps sing a hymn together before dispersing to their different self-chosen exercises with the apparatus. Sometimes the teacher gives them some exercises in manners, showing them how to rise gracefully and quietly from their little chairs, how to say good-morning; how to give and receive politely some object; how to carry things safely across the room, etc., etc. Sometimes they all sit about the teacher and have a talk with her, an exercise in ordinary well-bred conversation which is sadly needed by our American children, who are seldom, at least as young as this, trained to express themselves in any but trivial requests, or, as in the kindergarten, in repeating stories. The teacher questions the children about the happenings of their lives, about anything of more general interest which they may have observed, or on any topic which excites a general interest which they may have observed. Of course, because she is a Montessori teacher she does as little of this talking as possible herself, confining herself to brief remarks which may draw out the children. Such conversation is of the greatest help to the fluency and correctness of speech and to an early enriching of the vocabulary, all important factors in the release of the child from the prison of his baby limitations. The habit of listening while others talk acquired in these general morning conversations is also of incalculable value, as is attested by the proverbial rarity of the good listener even among adults.