The Importance of Repetition

In a Montessori environment, the Directress is never to interrupt a child if they are busy with an activity and clearly deep in concentration. Maria Montessori observed that in order to build up a child’s concentration span they need to be allowed to exercise it without interruption. If we are constantly interrupting the child while they are concentrating, we are standing in the way of allowing that concentration to develop and increase.

This brings me to the importance of allowing children to repeat an activity as many times as they want to so long as they are not harming themselves, their peers or their environment. In a Montessori setting, the Directress will present an activity to the child by demonstrating how it is done in a slow and quiet manner. Once the child has watched the Directress present the activity he or she is invited to have a turn. If the child would like to repeat that activity 100 times we should allow them to as there is so much other development taking place that we cannot see.

I am going to use a Practical Life activity as an example where transferring objects is the direct aim of the activity.

In this activity, it is clear to us that the direct aim is for the child to move the cotton balls from the left bowl into the right bowl using tongs. Every Montessori activity or piece of material has got many indirect aims too. In this particular case the Indirect aims may include;

1. Working from left to right in preparation for reading and writing.

2. Crossing the midline which is very important on a cognitive and a physical level.

On the brain level, a lack of midline crossing may indicate that the left and right sides of the brain are not communicating well together. On a physical level, when your child spontaneously crosses the midline with the dominant hand, then the dominant hand is going to get the practice that it needs to develop good fine motor skills.

3. Practicing the three finger pincer grip which will prepare the child to hold the pencil correctly.

4. Strengthening the hand and finger muscles which will again help with handwriting, as well as holding the pencil correctly.

5. Building up their concentration span as they are being allowed to work without interruption.

These are only a few of the indirect aims of one simple Practical Life activity. This activity could also help your child to become more independent as they could serve their own food with tongs at the dinner table.

We will never be able to know how many important skills a child will take out of one simple activity but it is our job to allow them the uninterrupted time to learn.