Of course the main business of the day is the use of the apparatus, the different Montessori exercises, and these soon occupy the attention of all the children. With intervals of outdoor play in the courtyard garden, care of the plants there, the morning progresses till the lunch hour, which has been described. After this, or indeed, whenever they feel sleepy, the smaller children take their naps, and they do not go home until five or six o’clock in the afternoon, having back of them a peaceful, harmonious day, every instant of which has been actively, happily, and profitably employed, and which has been full from morning till night of goodwill and comradeship.
From time to time it happens that a new brother or sister is introduced into this big family, with its régime of perfect freedom from unnecessary restraint. The behavior of children who are brought into the school after the beginning of the school-year is naturally extremely various, since they are allowed then, as always, to express with perfect liberty their own individualities. Some join at once, of their own accord, in one or another of the interesting “games” they see being played by the other children already initiated, and in half an hour are indistinguishable from the older inhabitants of that little world, drawing their fingers alternately over sandpaper and smooth wood to learn the difference between “rough” and “smooth,” or delightedly matching the different-colored spools of silk. Others, naturally shy ones, naturally reserved ones, those who have been rendered suspicious by injudicious home treatment, or those who have naturally slow mental machines, hold aloof for a time. They are allowed to do this as long as they please. They are welcomed once smilingly, and then left to their own devices.
I remember, in the Via Giusti school, seeing for several days in succession a tiny girl, not more than three, with wide, shy, fawn-eyes, sitting idle at a little table, in the middle of the morning, with all her wraps on. When I inquired the meaning of this very unusual sight, the Directress told me that, apparently, the child had something of the wild-animal terror of being caught in a trap, and had indicated, terrified, when her mother, on the first morning, tried to take off her cap and cloak, that she wished to be free at any moment to make her escape from these new and untried surroundings. So her wraps were not removed, she was allowed to sit near the door, which was kept ajar, and not a look or gesture from the Directress disturbed the reassuring isolation in which that baby, by slow degrees, found herself and learned her first lesson of the big world. I think she sat thus for three whole days, at first starting nervously if anyone chanced to approach her, with the painful, apprehensive glare of the constitutionally timid child, but little by little conquering herself.