The Montessori Silence Game is a sensorial lesson that is introduced in the primary classroom. It is a calming activity and patience activity that can be implemented at home too. This week I introduced a Silence Game for our morning meditation before we start circle time. By this time of the year, children have been practicing other types of “control of movement” practices, such as walking on the line, scooping, pouring, and moving the chair quietly.

This is how we play the silence game in our classroom. I model for children how to sit crisscrossed without movement and close their eyes using my whisper voice.

We are going to do a morning meditation, stretch your body, move your neck, close your eyes, take a deep breath, and make silence. You may hear some sounds in our classroom or outside our classroom. Then, I take two deep breaths and I close my eyes. All the children take two deep breaths and close their eyes. We sit still quietly for a few minutes. Then I say: I open my eyes to you, I open my heart to you, together we open our hearts to the sun, to the cloud, together we join our hearts this Monday morning. We hold hands together and we raise them. After all the children open their eyes. I ask them if anybody heard something during the silence game. Remember when we read a book, you can make silence and quiet your body. You can make silence any time, isn’t that great. You can stop at any time and take a deep breath. It is very helpful to make silence when you are sad or tired.

This is a very wonderful peaceful activity that I have implemented through my years of teaching as a part of our daily routine. The children love the silence game, and it also contributes to” normalization”.

As a side note, we also had a special visitor in our classroom on Monday!  Remington brought in his pet turtle, Mrs. T, to share with us. Children loved Mrs. T’s company and  they were very nice and gentle with her. Thank you to the Muller’family.

Some fun facts about Mrs. T:

– age: 37

– species: Eastern box turtle

Wishing you all a happy Thanksgiving,

Kaoutar and Sara