One of the principles of Montessori education is that learning is the child's job, and that activities that the child engages in so that he can learn have merit in and of themselves, regardless of output. To promote this idea, all the things the child can choose to do in the Montessori classroom are called works. They are not toys, and not games, and not activities, and not entertainment. They are works. Serious business. So, if you observe a Montessori classroom you may hear a teacher telling a child to "Go find a work" or "Go choose a work", especially if the child is being disruptive to other working students or just wandering around aimlessly. We fall into some of this vocabulary at home. We talk about "cutting works" and "typing works". Lately, Sophia is much taken with the "typing works". If she sees you on the computer she will sidle up next to you and say "Can you make me a typing spot?" Generally, this will be an opened Stickies note, of the color of her choosing, with the font made large enough for her to see what she's doing. Sometimes, she presses letters at random, other time she deliberately presses the same letter over and over, or presses and holds a letter and watches it fill the screen. A couple of times now, she has spelled out her name. Behold, Sophia's latest typing work :

My prediction that this week with Sophia would be unusually long and difficult my have been premature. We had a wonderful night last night. She was charming, engaged and creative and we had a great time. I sometimes count the time since Sophia last watched TV, and I consider any evening in which I don't turn on the TV for half an hour so I can take a break and get stuff done a small but definite victory. The last time Sophia watched TV was on Sunday, when she watched an hour in the morning (Little Bill and Sesame Street) and twenty minutes or so of our Power Puff Girls DVD in the evening. So in four days she's seen approximately 90 minutes of TV, an average of 23 minutes a day. With studies showing that kids her age watch an average of 3.6 hours per day she's well under the average, and well on her way to not having attention deficit issues, being able to read earlier and generally having higher cognitive skills than her peers who are more TV attached. Obviously, I have pointed out this streak because it's rare. There are weeks when Sophia watches TV every day, and a more usual routine is for her to watch TV on two or three nights during the week - sometimes for 90 minutes, because we prefer movies to regular TV with its insidious and pernicious commercials - and an hour on Sunday. Still, even on a heavy TV watching week, three nights at 90 minutes plus 60 minutes on Sunday only totals 5.5 hours for the week. Compared to 3.6 hours a day, she's still well under the average for kids her age. The streak probably ends this morning, when I plan to let her watch Clifford the Big Red Dog on PBS. She's been talking about Clifford non-stop, pretending that she's Clifford, then pretending that I'm Clifford and she's Emily Elizabeth. We've also checked out about half a dozen Clifford books from the library. Clifford the big red dog is her latest love. The cutest thing she's done in this bout of pretend is to add "said Clifford" to anything she says. "I want to get on the bed with you, said Clifford". She also corrects you if you call her Sophia. "I'm Clifford!"

At any rate, the real reason I started this entry was to talk about last night. I find that Sophia is doing so many new things and is growing so quickly that almost everything I want to write about her slips through the cracks, becomes old hat as quickly as it was a new marvel and before I get it down. She's been engaged in a lot of pretend play, pretending to be me, or Clifford or random animals or people. I had taken the pet carriers down from the shelf in the closet and left them out, as I always do before the cats need to go in them, so they can get used to them around. Sophia discovered the pet carriers yesterday and we talked about what they were and why they were out and how Kurt will be taking the cats to St. Louis in them and so on and so forth. In a little while, she was carrying the pet carriers around and I asked her what she was doing and she said "I'm taking these to St. Louis." In a moment she told me to come see the animals in St. Louis. I said I'd love to, but she'd have to show me where to go. So she took me into her room and said "Here we are in St. Louis!" and I said that I could see the pet carriers were here in St. Louis and that over there I could see the Arch and over here Wells Fargo where daddy works and over there our new house. And Sophia jumped up and ran over to where I pointed and said excitedly,"I'm playing in Sophia's new playground! I'm sliding down the slide." And then she pointed into her bathroom and said "Look! There's Sophia's new Montessori school!" So we went into her new classroom at her new school and I told her that I could see the brass insets and the pink tower and over on this wall I could see a big map! She pointed to the wall and started singing the continent song moving her hand around on the imaginary map to point (very roughly) at where the different continents would be. She was completely sold on the imaginary St. Louis, and very excited and eager about all the things we were pretending to see and do. We climbed to the top of the Arch. We pretended to climb for a long, long time and talked about how tall it was. When we got to the top I pretended to be amazed and said, "Ohhhhhhhhh, I'm so high up! I can see all of St. Louis!" and she immediately imitated me, putting her hand above her eyes as I had done, and saying the same thing I had said. It was so delightful, and so comforting to see her completely enthusiastic about St. Louis. At one point she said, "I see all our boxes in our new house." She also put all her beanie babies into the pet carriers and we kept checking on them in St. Louis. The lushness of the landscape of her imagination is completely captivating. We truly did go to St. Louis, and enjoyed it very much.