Activity is a natural and absorbing part of a child’s life.  He is always doing something.  It remains for the parent to direct this restless movement and to transform some of it into useful labor.  Work, in the sense of accomplishing results for the satisfaction and benefit of the parent, is quite foreign to our plan for training the young child.  But work for the child’s own satisfaction and for the formation of the habit of industry must occupy our attention in large measure.  The child’s playthings should from his earliest days be chosen in recognition of his desire to do things and make things.  The shops are filled with showy toys, mechanical and otherwise, and children find the toyshop a veritable fairyland.  But once satiated with the sight of any particular toy, however cunningly devised—­and satiety comes soon—­the child forsakes the gorgeous plaything for his blocks, or paper and a pair of scissors, or even his mother’s clothespins.  He can do something with these.

The Montessori materials are perhaps the most thoughtfully planned in this direction of anything now obtainable; and no one having the care of young children should be without some knowledge of this now famous method.  All the materials have this advantage:  they offer definite problems and consequently afford the child the joy of accomplishment.  A few of the occupations of life afford us unending enjoyment at every stage of the doing, but not many.  It is rather the achievement of our end, the “lust of finishing,” which carries us through the tiresome details of our work.  The child must therefore be early introduced to the joy of accomplishment.  Instead of unending toys, give him something to work with.  He will appreciate your thoughtfulness, and he will find not only joy but real development in their use.

At first the child’s work will consist of fragmentary efforts, but at a remarkably early age he will show evidence of a power of concentration and persistence which will make possible the accomplishment of finished undertakings.  He begins to know what he wants to do and to exhibit considerable ingenuity in finding and combining materials.  Most of all, he wants to imitate the activities he sees around him.

In the strain of modern life a widespread restlessness seems to have seized mankind.  Whatever people do, they want to be doing something else, and the pathway of the average individual is strewn with crude beginnings, half-finished jobs, abandoned work.  The child very easily falls into line with this tendency of his elders.  Hence he needs definite encouragement to see clearly what he has in hand and to bring his industrial attempts to a worth-while conclusion.  Avoid, even with a little child, that inconsiderate habit of “grown-ups” of calling the little worker away whenever you desire his attention or help, quite regardless of the damage you may do to his work by your untimely interruption.  Keep the child, as far as possible, too, from undertaking tasks too difficult or requiring too much time for completion.  Discourage aimless handling of tools.  A cheerful “What are you making?” sometimes crystallizes hitherto rambling desires.  A timely suggestion often meets with enthusiastic response.