Yes and No! A child will choose to work with any activity in which he/she has had a lesson.  A child may ask for a lesson from an adult or another child.  If the work the child chooses is inappropriate for his/her developmental stage, the adult will direct the child to an activity which has elements that have drawn the child’s interest and which is a foundation for what the child wants to do. 

If the child chooses to do work that someone else is doing, the child who has the work may, but does not have to, share his/her work (some wok is meant for only one child at a time).

A child may work with an activity as long as he /she want under the following conditions.  Sometimes the child works with the same activity every day for a long period of time.  It is up to the teacher (and it is part of her/his training) to observe why the child is exhibiting this particular behavior.  It may be that the child is afraid to move on to a more challenging piece of work, and it is then the role of the teacher to invite the child to have a lesson on the next level of the activity.  One way to do this is to tell the child when he/she enters the classroom in the morning that you would like to give him/her a lesson on a particular activity.  The teacher may ask the child if he/she wants to do it first or second.  The child will almost always say second but will then come for the lesson later in the morning. 

Sometimes a child works with the same activity every day for a long period of time because he/she wishes to socialize with a friend and if he/she has some work out, the teacher isn’t going to say: “You need to get some work out”  The need to socialize may be the most important developmental need at this time.  It would be up to the teacher to allow the child a reasonable amount of time with the activity and then suggest that the child put that work away and chooses another piece of work.  The child may choose new work and go back to socializing with the same friend but at least the child is not monopolizing materials that he/she is not focused on.

Some time a child works with the same activity every day for a long period of time because he/she wishes to master the activity.  The Montessori classroom allows this to happen.