So I did my Work Experience in a Montessori back in February. I did it for five week days but I am going to tell you about what I did throughout the whole week because there was a lot of repetition each day.
Firstly, the Montessori I went to is run by a woman, Ms Judi, who turned her garage into a Montessori over 30 years ago. There are around 12 children attending the Montessori on a daily basis. The Montessori runs from 8:45 - 12:15 every morning.
So, what did I do? Well, I helped the children with the work they were doing. I helped them do many things e.g. jigsaws, cutting and moulding the play dough into different shapes, writing letters, drawing pictures and much more. I enjoyed playing and helping them. We did painting one day and I was surprised to see that all of the paintings were blobs of colours while one girl had painted a perfect rainbow. This girl happened to have a twin sister who, like the others had painted blobs of colours. This showed me that each child has different personalities and skills that are slowly developing.
We did some other cool activities like making and decorating biscuits to give to parents for Valentines Day. They also made paper baskets with heart decorations on them where they put the biscuits into. Everyday the children had a snack at break time e.g. fruit and biscuits. One day, we went into Ms Judi's house and made popcorn by putting the popcorn seeds into a pot with oil. Then the children grew very excited when we started hearing the popcorn popping. I thought moments like this were some of the best I had in the full week.
There are advantages and disadvantages to being a Montessori teacher. Some of the advantages include working for short hours five days a week. You also get to see children grow up and teach them how to read and write which is very rewarding. Some of the disadvantages are that even though the job is only short hours, you are busy all of that time. Also, some of the children are very bold when they come at the start of the year and you have to have a big amount of patience to teach them not to be bold.Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the week in the Montessori. I found it very interesting to see how some of the children reacted and responded to me, and also how some of them would fight over my attention. At the start of the week I thought I might like to do Montessori teaching because I like working with children. But by the end of the week I knew that I wouldn't like to be a Montessori teacher as there was a huge amount of repetition each day which I wouldn't like. I think I may still work with children in a different way when I'm older but just not as a Montessori teacher.
Thank you for reading my Blog post on my Work Experience in the Montessori. I hope you enjoyed reading it!
Sources:
http://setonmontessori.org/school/site/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/toddler-puzzle.jpg
http://www.michaelolaf.net/alb9painting.jpg
