Repetition of Work

Occasionally a teacher will be asked why some works remain in the classroom through the entire school year. The answer comes down to two key Montessori ideas- repetition and variation. Very often I find myself writing down the same works for the same students nearly every day for weeks at a time. While eventually I may offer demonstrations of a new work, I almost never interrupt their desire to repeat a work because they are most likely getting some information from this process. Just in these first weeks I have watched returning students use the knobless cylinders in new ways. These variations are the culmination of months and months of working with the cylinders, and removing them from the classroom would have prevented exciting new discoveries. 

In most areas of the classroom I will introduce an extension or "next step" work when a child is repeating an activity. The most notable exception is in the sensorial area. If a child is coming home day after day with "knobless cylinders," "knob cylinders," "geometric solids," or "brown stair" written on their sheets, then they have been very busy in our sensorial area of the classroom. All of these works seem to have endless variations and extensions. Some of these are demonstrated to the student, and some are things they have come up with on their own. Over the last few weeks I have been able to take some great pictures of student-invented variations with the knobless cylinders. So, even if it seems that your child is coming home with Xerox copies of old daily sheets, take heart knowing that they are indeed hard at work!