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It was the children themselves who showed that they preferred one another’s company to dolls, and the small ‘real life’ utensils to toys. —Maria Montessori The Absorbent Mind, p. 169. Observing Sensitive Periods in Young Children Recently, a friend of mine and her two-year-old daughter came over for coffee. Because I was moving soon, I had already packed up my few remaining infant toys. I was worried that I didn’t have anything interesting to share with my young guest until I remembered Dr. Montessori’s observation that children prefer real objects to toys. Having never visited my house before, young Ellie needed to explore her new environment. She wandered around the living room, checking out the furniture and knick-knacks on the end and coffee tables. Ellie was intrigued by the glass topped coffee table: How did it work? What held up the glass and how did objects not fall through it? And then she saw my large blue art-deco glass vase. Fascinated, she asked to see what was inside. Whe...

“It seems to him, at this stage, a particularly vital matter that everything in his environment should be kept in its accustomed place; and that the actions of the day should be carried out in their accustomed routine.”   – E.M. Standing,  Maria Montessori: Her Life and Work , p. 123 Understanding the Child’s Sense of Order in the Montessori Environment When my son was a toddler, he would line his shoes up just right in his closet. They had to be perfectly straight and even. On his bed, all of his stuffed animals had to be placed in exactly the same spot each morning, and all the trucks and trains had specific ‘homes’ when not being played with. We laughed over his desire to have everything in its place, but he really would get upset if something was out of order. “... nature endows a child with a sensitiveness to order. It is a kind of inner sense that distinguishes the relationships between various objects rather than the objects themselves. … Such an environment provides th...