The Good Kind of Busy Work
I'm Aubrey Hargis, Montessorian and mom of two. I chose homeschooling partly because I was disenchanted with schools and I wanted an alternative education for my children where I could be part of their academic lives. It's mostly worked out! We have good days and bad days, but I'm always learning how to do better as my children's teacher -- because Education is a journey we take with our children, and the opportunities for learning start over every day…
because education is a journey we take with our children, and the opportunities for learning start over every day.
Hey Sweet Friend
Welcome back to the podcast! Whether you are listening to this podcast while driving somewhere, doing the dishes, doing some kind of busy work yourself, or just relaxing sitting on your couch, wherever you are, you are welcome! I am going to be talking in this whole episode about busywork. I want to help you learn how to identify it so you can AVOID it. There's a lot of pressure to have our children do busy work...even as homeschoolers, even as Montessori ones! I want to bolster you with some grounding in why you don't want busy work to be part of your homeschool, and what you want to focus on instead.
Meet Pamela
Each week, I like to feature someone who is a part of our Child of the Redwoods community! The participants in this community are such a huge part of what makes it special. This week, we’re sharing advice and inspiration from Homeschool of the Redwoods Primary and Elementary alumna and Constellation member Debra, Montessori Mom of 3! You can learn more about Debra here.
Hate Busy Work? Try Homeschooling
One of the actual reasons that we decided to homeschool was because both my husband and I worked in schools where there was a lot of busy work. We also attended schools where there was a LOT of busy work...I went to Montessori until the end of third grade and then switched to public school. From there on out, I encountered so much busy work. We knew homeschooling would be a chance for us all to LIVE and learn together--practically, purposefully, and skipping all that busy work.
David and I also remembered that in school, we had these very intense passions and interests in certain things. We were both avid readers. I remember reading so much in school, I would bring my books with me to class, and I would tuck them into my desk...and whenever I finished work early, or the work felt meaningless, I would sneak and read a little bit of it. I love that my homeschooled children don’t ever have to sneak to do the things that they love.
What is Busy Work, and What Role Does it Play in Schooling?
Busy work, in my personal perspective, is something that you do that really doesn't have a greater meaning for you. What's busy work for one person might not be busy work for another person, as they might enjoy different tasks and have different needs. Classroom teachers are actually trained to teach to the middle of the class. You create assignments that will work for most kids, even though you know it's gonna miss the kids who are neurologically different, are more advanced or lagging behind or kids who just have a different learning style. As a result, a teacher will often provide LOTS of practice work...which many of the students may not find useful OR engaging.
Many homeschoolers feel there's a lot of time that is wasted inside schools; transitioning from one place to another, filling the time and space with busy work. I don't feel like that, though. I do believe that there is a lot of time that could be used better in school that teachers are not able to take advantage of due to the structure of a school day--children have to switch from class to class and teacher to teacher. Still, I don't necessarily really consider that time wasted. The truth of the matter is we waste time, here at home, too! It might take a long time to transition from one thing to another or to gather our things to make the next task happen.
The other thing worth remembering is that children's brains don't need to be constantly learning.
Children are always learning in one sense of the word. In another sense, there's only so much time that our brains can have this intense focus before we need a break. In that regard, I think that “wasted time” in school has a place! When I was in school, I remember doing lots of coloring pages and word finds so that I wouldn’t waste time. Those things--they can be fun, or meditative when offered freely as a choice.
There Is No Busy Work in Montessori
Here’s why: Maria Montessori concluded that children learn best when learning comes from intrinsic motivation. That means allowing them to follow their inner guide! As adults, I think a lot of us have lost our access to this inner spirit of what we might call curiosity or desire to learn. For many of us, our education--our goal-driven, extrinsically motivated learning experiences--make it harder to hear that voice.
In Montessori, we teach children how to keep that part of themselves bright, on the surface, and alive. You don't have to teach them anything...they already know. They are already moved by the spirit to go and discover the world around them. We often see their repetitive behaviors as meaningless or a waste of time. We might be thinking: “maybe their time is better spent working on their alphabet, learning their numbers, or listening to a story!” But what they do driven by those internal urges is valuable work. It’s hard for us to understand sometimes how uninhibited their behavior is.
But it doesn’t stay that way forever. Maria Montessori talked about how children are similar to a ball of soft wax. We can make these little impressions in it, and the child is making these impressions by having contact with us and learning from us. As we model or we interact with the child, little impressions are being made, and the child is molding the wax into the future person that they're going to become once they have more of a conscious mind, and their brain starts to develop a little bit more. These first impressions are made young, though--and those young choices have an impact.
The Pressure to Keep Children “In Control”
As parents, sometimes we feel expected to keep our child occupied, calm, and quiet--like we must keep them busy to keep their behavior appropriate, especially in social situations. As Debra mentioned in her interview, the child is focused on the process...they don’t care about the outcome. You may not see or understand the educational value of the task they are being driven to repeat...but that also doesn’t mean you must give them some kind of busy work to do to make sure that they are on task and “learning something.”
In Montessori, we value where the child truly is right at that moment. As children get older, they are more susceptible to our influence. By the time we get to the elementary years, we are already having to remind our children to follow that inner guide. No longer do they hear it and follow it with abandon, we find ourselves asking: what is it that your heart wants to do right now? What is going to help your brain grow? Is it this is it something else are you doing right now? What is going to make you feel the best? Are you doing what's going to help you learn the most about that thing that you're so interested in? The long and short of it is: what we are doing with our toddlers and young children now in terms of letting them follow those natural drives impacts the child’s ability to hear that voice and be guided by it later in life.
So instead of busy work, when you see your child or little toddler doing something that looks meaningless to you--trust that they are doing something meaningful to them. If you see that they are running around, and they seem a little frustrated or unhappy and are seeking connection with work-- you can help them get a little busier. But I strongly recommend that you make it purposeful. This is the Montessori way: we give them purposeful work to do...and the BONUS is that their hands happen to be busy. So if you're in the car or whatever, you can always think “What's a practical thing that they could work on with their hands that has a purpose to it?” For an older child, it might be something like knitting. For a young child, it might be something as simple as learning how to button or zip. They can practice threading a plastic needle as the first step towards more complicated sewing. Something purposeful, that they are interested in doing, that allows them to embrace downtime, while their little hands are in motion.
The Meditation of Practical Work
I often feel like my most meditative times are when I am physically doing something. As a child, I became aware of this very, very strongly. Every single year around Thanksgiving time at our house we would host, and my job was to polish the silver. I would get out my great grandma's silver pieces, and I would polish them and any of the silver-plated things that were around our home that had been passed down. I would take that time to polish, and as they had usually not been polished in a whole year, I would have to work hard to get all that tarnish off.
I found it such a soothing experience. My mother was tickled...she's a Montessori teacher. She knew that practical life work was not just good for young children. It's something that can speak to all of us, and help us process things emotions in our lives. So she always saved the silver for me to polish and encouraged me to go and get that silver out anytime I had some emotions to work through, or anytime I was feeling bored, and just needed something physical to do.
That is the kind of “busy work” that we do in Montessori. It's not busy work...it's not meaningless work just to keep somebody else happy. It's something to encourage us to have more introspection, and to help us daydream, to help us pay more attention to our world. There is such a strong hand-mind connection that Maria Montessori knew about and science has confirmed.
You can engage in practical, purposeful, work yourself, to help yourself become more introspective and happier and feel more present in the moment. I think that that can be a great form of meditation. My sister-in-law is a knitter. I have recently been doing watercolor. It is not like I need to watercolor these rocks that I picked up. It’s not purposeful in that way. But it's meaningful in the way that I'm going to do something that resonates with me, that I've always wanted to learn how to do, I'm purposefully learning how to do this thing and it's also calming my mind at the same time. “Busy work” in Montessori is anything that you do with your hands that allows your mind to process and assess. I think that can have great value in and of itself, when driven by the person who is doing the work, and not imposed by someone else, just because they want that time to be filled.
Gratitude
Today, I am grateful that I had all that silver polishing practice as a young child. Even though I don't often polish my silver now, it's something that I think about when I am looking for tools to help me find calm. I know it can help me to process emotions and think about my life in a new and different way. I know that it's there! For me, it's like one of the tools in the Aubrey Toolkit. So I'm wondering, what is your calm thing in your toolkit that you love to do in a meditative way? And how can you help your child to learn to value that as well?