Montessori Monday – Help Your Child Develop Concentration

Will (7) and Christina (2) in the summer of 1992.

It’s summer vacation already for many children, and it will be summer vacation soon for many others. Whether you want your young child to be ready for preschool (traditional or Montessori), ready for traditional school, or ready for homeschool at the end of the summer, the best quality to focus on is helping your child develop concentration.

John Bowman from Montessori at Home has a great post on “Concentration and Normalization” at 1+1+1=1. Montessori Print Shop has a wonderful post on “Normalization in the Montessori Environment.” Montessori for Everyone also has a wonderful post on “Sterling Qualities of the ‘Normalized’ Montessori Child.” “A Lecture on The Secret of Childhood: Normalization and Deviations” given by Dr. Rita Shaefer Zener is very helpful as well.

Summer is an especially nice time to focus on concentration. You generally don’t have pressing educational objectives, and it’s a perfect time to simply follow your child’s interests. If your child is interested in a topic or type of work, he or she is more likely to concentrate for long periods (and increase the ability to concentrate along the way). When that happens, you just have to be careful not to interrupt.

Here are 5 ways to help your child develop concentration:

1. Prepare a Montessori-friendly home.

Whether you’re a parent or grandparent, you’ll find ideas and links in my post on “How to Set Up a Montessori Space at Home.”

2. Give lots of opportunities for your child to do practical life activities.

Practical Life Shelf

Many Montessorians talk about OCCI – order, concentration, coordination, and independence. Those are qualities children develop naturally by working uninterrupted with practical life activities. Here’s a post with more about “Practical Life Activities.”

It’s your choice whether you want to prepare a number of practical life trays or just incorporate practical life activities naturally into your daily home life. If you want to prepare some activity trays or lessons, you’ll find lots of helpful ideas here: Activities – Practical Life.

3. Follow your child’s interests.

This is important at any time, but I think it’s especially important during summer vacation. If you’d like to add educational activities during the summer, you could choose a simple Montessori-inspired unit study that follows your child’s interest at the time. You’ll find a list of my unit-study roundup posts (including some summery ones) here: “Should You Use Unit Studies?”

4. When your child is absorbed in an activity, don’t interrupt (and allow your child to repeat the activity as many times as he or she wishes).

I already mentioned not interrupting, but it’s such an important principle that I’m saying it again. Here’s a post that tells why it’s good to let your child repeat an activity over and over: “Encourage Your Child’s Sensitive Periods.”

5. Let your child spend lots of time outdoors in nature.

Maria Montessori emphasized the importance of children spending time in nature. The new movement to get kids outdoors also emphasizes the importance of kids spending time in nature. One of the symptoms of “nature-deficit disorder” is difficulty concentrating. Here’s a post with ideas for learning activities outdoors: “Montessori-Inspired Outdoor Environment.”

Do you have plans to help your child develop concentration this summer?

Montessori Monday Link-Up

If you have some Montessori activity trays/lessons to share, please link up below. It’s fine to link up a post from your archives – and you may link up anytime during the week! Your post may be any Montessori-inspired activity or idea. It doesn’t need to be related to my Montessori Monday post. I publish the Montessori Monday post and linky at 6:00 a.m. EST each Monday and keep the linky open throughout the week.

Please place the Montessori Monday button (using the code from the right sidebar) in your post or put a link back to this post. Let’s use Montessori Monday to gain inspiration/ideas and to encourage each other! If you would leave an encouraging comment on the post linked up ahead of you (along with any other posts you’re drawn to), that would be awesome! Thanks for participating!

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Linked to The Mommy Club Resources and Solutions at Milk and Cuddles and Crystal & Co. , The Weekly Kid’s Co-op, Fun Stuff Fridays, Living Life Intentionally Linky Party, Preschool Corner, Saturday Show & Tell, Show-and-Share Saturday, The Sunday Showcase at Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas and Classified: Mom, and Link & Learn.