Home Schooling or Montessori: Three-Hour Work and Study Periods for Children?

If you are a home schooling parent who has become interested in involving your child(ren) in a Montesorri school and program, it can sometimes be difficult to understand some of the methodologies that are used by Montessori educators and systems.

One thing this writer has found in his interactions with Montessori parents (to be) is that there can rather easily arise some confusion about the distinctions between what home schooling and Montessori schooling are intended to achieve, or reasonably can achieve.

One instance of this confusion can be discovered in the Montessori concept of the three-hour work period.

Some parents who have been home schooling their children and are now intrigued by the possibilities of Montessori might find that their children do indeed "work" for three-hour periods (and more) during the home school week, but that these periods are punctuated. The children work at their studies for a half an hour or so, then need a short break or need to show mommy or daddy something, etc. The confusion that I've sometimes found to arise is whether or not as a parent one should be encouraging one's children to concentrate on school work for three hours at a time, without interruption.

However, the three hour work period is a Montessori guideline to prevent the short-attention-requirement and shallowness of the typical public school lesson. It does not necessarily mean that the three hours will go without any interruption. However, Montessori educators and administrators find that such an extended focus by the child is easier to achieve within the structure of the school classroom, with a child surrounded by many peers of different ages, than it is within the home and its attendant familial setting and feelings.

"Separation" and "individuation" are not as easy for a child to achieve when being educated at home, even though home schooling is praised by Montessori educators and its intellectual and emotional benefits as compared and contrasted with public education are lauded. This is because professional teachers are able to form a different kind of bond with children in the peer-setting than parents are in the home-because, at the end of the day, one's home schooled children are still one's children first and one's students second.

Even in the Montessori school setting, a child's "work period" may include getting herself a snack, looking at the fish in the aquarium, or taking a break to bounce on the medicine ball.

But the crucial difference is the social setting, the more objective interactive atmosphere with less complicated emotional ties (for instance, at the school, the child gets her own snack; at home, it's the parent who probably ends up making it for her). It is this distinction that a home schooling parent wants to consider if he is looking at the possibility of Montessori education for his child(ren).