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I just spent 2 days and finished reading a pretty interesting book titled "Teaching Montessori in the Home: Pre-School Years: The Pre-School Years
" by Elizabeth G. Hainstock. There are a lot of useful information in this book and it has totally changed my perception of "Montessori" method as I always thought it is just about "learning through playing". I was absolutely wrong! It is definitely more complicated than that and indeed I found it a brilliant method of self-teaching our kids.Most of the training materials could be prepared by ourselves but since they are meant for 2½ years old and above, I decided to start Renzo with some simple puzzles, so we brought back 3 sets of puzzles with knobs on the pieces from Cherry's place, she was pretty good at them when she's young. And when Renzo first started with it last Friday, I couldn't resist the temptation to provide help by telling him:"Come Renzo let mummy show you how to do this!". Then I realized that based on Montessori concept, I should act as an observer who is always there to guide, and keep my boy's enthusiasm alive without interfering with his efforts to teach himself.
So on the following days, I changed my strategy. Basically I just let Renzo continue with whatever he wants to do with his puzzle, including biting and throwing the pieces all over the place. But I give him encouragement immediately when he's able to put the pieces nicely on the wooden board, by clapping with him and telling him that he's done a good job! And 2 day later, this little boy found his way to complete his favorite "transportation vehicle" puzzle, how exactly did he figure that out, I have no idea at all. Look at how excited he was when he completed the puzzle!Being able to do that at 15 months is not worth showing off, as I think kids with good eye-hand coordination all can do the same, but knowing that he's benefiting from a great learning method is definitely very rewarding!
