In Montessori classrooms, children wash tables for hours — and they love it.
Some parents can find this baffling and ask, ~“How do you get a child to focus for so long, and on cleaning something??”
Wild enough, such concentration can be achieved by basically any boy or girl, given the right guidance.
Below are a few short videos to help you become a pro at aiding your own son or daughter through washing a table at home, Montessori style.
But before jumping in to watch them, note that if your child is around age 5 or younger, the goal for him or her is not necessarily like ours as adults.
From the young child’s perspective, the result or end product — so in this case a clean table — is not the purpose. It’s the process that matters.
It’s the act of getting a cloth … wetting and putting soap on it … moving that soapy cloth around a table … drying that table afterward — these are the things that are important to the child, and to his or her early development generally. (This is one way in which children strengthen executive functioning skills.)
So unlike us grownups, the young child is not focused on having a spotlessly clean table; he merely enjoys the act of cleaning it, all on his own.
For instance, in the video (16 seconds) below take a peek into a Montessori classroom as a young boy “washes the table” — and I mean really washes the table. 😅
“Our real task should be to teach children with great patience all these things, and then wait for them to accomplish their skill with the slowness that characterizes their development.”
Now if you’d like to help your child wash a table or two at home, especially if they’re in the 3-6+ age range, the woman in this next video (6 mins) will walk you through everything, step by step:
And just for fun, here is a young girl scrubbing a table with focus (1 min) ♥️:
As many parents understandably note, at home we may not always have an extra hour to be washing a table! And that’s all right and totally normal.
BUT… if we never find the time for it — if children never get a chance to fully enjoy the process of our adult “chores” — then odds are they’ll learn to loathe them, and down the road they surely won’t be listening to our requests to clean this or that around the house.
When early on we guide children to clean properly, and we at least occasionally set aside time for them to enjoy it all, then later we’re less likely to find ourselves nagging and in endlessly frustrating battles about the importance of ‘cleaning up after yourself’.
In fact, if done right, some children wind up being the ones to remind us that we missed a spot! 🧼🧽🧹 While others just take the chores into their own hands altogether…
If you doubt this could be your child: try setting out a few clothes pins or hangers, buy a small but real washing station, and see if your own daughter or son doesn’t become the little laundry lady or gentleman real quick. 🙂HERE is a Google search for an old-school clothes scrubber.
I hope this brief post was even the tiniest bit helpful for you, and now all my best at home with table washing (and more), Montessori style!
Don’t know much about Montessori? This is for you…
Jesse McCarthy is the Founder of Montessori Education, an organization dedicated to helping parents and teachers raise independent, flourishing children — while enjoying themselves along the way.