Montessori mother - Kamelini Montessori

A MONTESSORI MOTHER 21
teacher's more or less accurate guess at when the
children were becoming tired. Indeed, as I reflected
on this, I noticed that, although the bigger ones were
continuing their musical march with undiminished
pleasure, the younger ones had already exhausted
the small amount of consecutive interest their infant
organisms are capable of, and, without spoiling the
fun for the others, indeed without being observed,
had suddenly stopped dancing and prancing as sud-
denly as they began and, with the kitten-like fitfulness
of their age, were wandering away in groups of
two and three out to the great, open courtyard.
I suppose they went on playing quieter games
there, but I did not follow them, so absorbed was I in
watching the four little girls who had now at last
finished their very leisurely meal and were preparing
the tables for the other children. They were about
four and a half and five years old, an age at which
I would have thought children as capable of solving a
problem in calculus as of undertaking, without supervision,
to set tables for twenty other babies. They
went at their undertaking with no haste, indeed with
a slowness which my racial impatience
found abso-
lutely excruciating. They paused constantly for prolonged
consultations, and to verify and correct them-
selves as they laid the knife, fork, spoon, plate, and
napkin at each place. Interested as I was, and be-
ginning, as I did, to understand a little of the ideas
of the school, I still was so under the domination of
my lifetime of over-emphasis on the importance of the