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News & Blog

March 3, 2022  |  By Northwest Montessori In News & Blog

False Fatique & The Montessori Work Cycle

workcycle

What is false fatigue in Montessori?

I love this graph from from Spontaneous Activity in Education by Maria Montessori. What you’ll see is a 3-hour work cycle in a classroom in a 3-6 classroom.

In this graph the children arrive at 9am. For the first 30 minutes you have the children arriving, settling in, greeting and observing each other. Then from 9:30 to 10am you see the children often selecting work they know already, an easier work.

Around 10am you see a dip – this is “false fatigue.” This is where the class can be a little unsettled, marked on the graph as “agitation.” A child might want to use the toilet, there may be a feeling of unrest and distraction and we may feel like we want to round them up to read a book, sing a song and control the energy.

The wise Montessori teacher knows and observes (stepping in only where a child might hurt themselves, another child or the environment) because they know that after this false fatigue we see some of the deepest work of the session – marked on the graph “most earnest work, new and difficult work.”

The end of the graph the work slowly comes to a stop and I love how it is marked “calm serenity.” When a child feels satisfied, challenged, and peaceful, they have that hallmark calm of a Montessori classroom.

So what can we do with this information?

Take some time to observe a morning at home:

  • do you see something similar happen in your home?
  • do you observe false fatigue?
  • if so, can you sit out the chaos of the “false fatigue” to see them come to some of their deepest work of the morning?
  • does this happen at other times of day too?

Note: For a toddler this may be a shorter work cycle of around 2 hours

 

 

Article Source:https://www.themontessorinotebook.com/what-is-false-fatigue-in-montessori/

Article by Northwest Montessori

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