The joy of indirect preparation is that while the learning is unconscious, the sense of achievement is the child’s own.
DEMYSTIFYING MONTESSORI
Indirect Preparation for Writing
At the age of about four, children in Montessori nursery school spontaneously begin writing. No worksheets have been introduced; no painfully repetitive tracing of letters around dotted shapes; no agonising confusions between bs and ds or ps and gs. How is this possible? One of Maria Montessori’s insights into early learning was that children do things by themselves when they are ready. So what makes them ready? The answer is indirect preparation. All the elements of writing have been put in place indirectly from the day a child starts at nursery. You only need three skills to write: prehensile grip (pincer grip), directional awareness and physical control. Practical life and sensorial exercises are designed to teach the child to work in a left-right direction so that left-right directionality is learned both physically and perceptually.
Pouring, transferring, scooping, sorting, pairing and grading are always done working from left to right.
The prehensile grip necessary for holding pencils is trained through the use of finger and thumb in lifting blocks, pegs, manipulating small objects and then pencils in free colouring and drawing.
Stencilled shapes, known as insets for design are then filled in allowing the pencil to press against the inside of the shape for directional control. Around. Across. Up. Down. Back and up. Forward and down. A circle. A triangle. A square. An oval. Many, many shapes are drawn with geometrical precision which is consistent, beautiful and satisfying. The shape books become works of art in themselves, with no mention of the word writing.
The geometric cabinet has many different shapes which the child gets to know by feeling around the triangles, squares, circles, quadrilaterals and polygons.
All the while preparation for writing is taking place indirectly; circulating and negotiating all the directions needed for letter formation. Next the child will feel the shape of the sandpaper letters, drawing around them with the forefinger, thus committing the shape of the letter to the brain. Naming the letters as they are felt gives them an identity and character which soon translates into word formation. Once there, it is only a matter of time before the reverse process will occur: the child will draw the letter on paper without any prompting, guiding or exhortation. A feeling of pure joy, discovery and autonomy is achieved as writing appears spontaneously as if by magic.