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Since it has been seen to be necessary to give so much to the child, let us give him a vision of the whole universe. The universe is an imposing reality, and an answer to all questions. —Maria Montessori To Educate the Human Potential, p. 5. Montessori education is not segregated by topic, curricular area, or grade level. Because we teach the whole child, the method we employ must be that of a generalist rather than a specialist. We must become proficient in all subjects not just isolated disciplines. The mind of the child is not compartmentalized, so we should not teach as if it is. Montessori Is About Teaching the Whole Child My initial training was as a French and English teacher. When I accepted my first position in an upper elementary Montessori classroom, I was told that I would be responsible for teaching math and science as well as language and social studies. I will admit, I was nervous. I had not studied math since high school, and I certainly was not a “math” teacher. Howev...

Education, therefore, of little ones is important, especially from three to six years of age, because this is the embryonic period for the formation of character and of society, (just as the period from birth to three is that for forming the mind, and the prenatal period that for forming the body). —Maria Montessori The Absorbent Mind, p. 221–222. Where does the Montessori method begin? In The Absorbent Mind , Dr. Montessori tells us that “The greatness of the human personality begins at the hour of birth.” (p. 4) But, Dr. Montessori did not begin developing her method with infants. She began with children who were between 3 and 6 years old. In the early 1900s, working parents had little choice when it came to childcare. Children who were 7 years old went to school. This meant that children 6 years and younger were left alone, caring for younger children for 8–10 hours each day. Montessori’s first school, the Casa dei Bambini, in the slums of San Lorenzo, proved to have horrendous cond...

It should be realized that genuine interest cannot be forced. Therefore, all methods of education based on centers of interest which have been chosen by adults are wrong. —Maria Montessori University of Amsterdam Lecture, 1950. The purpose of Montessori’s Five Great Lessons is to awaken a sense of wonder within students and serve as a catalyst to learning. By giving a story that leaves students asking “What happens next?” we open the door to the imagination. What comes next are the Key Lessons, lessons that allow the child to learn more. Where the Five Great Lessons present a whole, big picture, the Key Lessons provide topical details. Montessori Today, Chapter 4: The Key Lessons That Follow the Great Lessons New Montessori teachers, especially those that come from a conventional school background, often ask why the Five Great Lessons are so sparse on details. They want to bring in charts, graphs, PowerPoints, and technology. But when introducing something to students, less is more. ...

In September 2015, the U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services issued a joint policy statement on Inclusion of Children with Disabilities in Early Childhood Programs that states that “all young children with disabilities should have access to inclusive high-quality early childhood programs, where they are provided with individualized and appropriate support in meeting high expectations.” Dr. Montessori believed that all children not only had the ability but the intrinsic motivation to learn. Separating and segregating children due to disabilities, giftedness, or other diversities does not align with the Montessori principal of cosmic, inclusive education. In fact, the Montessori environment, first established in 1906, is a leader in inclusive education. Montessori education follows the needs of the child, regardless of what those needs are. The teacher must be ready to respectfully accommodate individual needs within the environment rather than ma...

Maria Montessori observed that when children were given freedom in an environment suited to their needs, they flourished and reached their full potential. She noted that after a period of intense concentration and the opportunity to work with materials that were fully engaging, children were refreshed and content; their inner discipline and sense of peace seemed to grow. Dr. Montessori described this unique process in a child’s development as “normalization,” and she referred to it as “ the most important single result of our whole work. ” ( The Absorbent Mind, p. 204 ) Normalization in Montessori Elementary: A Teacher's Perspective In my experience, every Montessori classroom reaches a period of normalization in a different time frame, unique to the individuals in the classroom. One factor that seems to affect the rate of reaching normalization is the environment’s ratio of returning students to new students. In my experience, when fewer than one-third of the children are new, you...

Cosmic education is the theoretical base upon which the many concepts and activities of the elementary classroom are built into a coherent body of knowledge and experience … [it] is an overall approach to education that involves helping students develop an awareness that everything in the universe is connected and interdependent and forms a harmonious whole, also that they themselves are part of and contribute to that whole. — NAMC Montessori Manual Five Great Lessons/Cosmic Education and Peace, p 85. Dr. Montessori believed that by teaching children to recognize the interdependence of all living things, she would help them develop consciousness of their place on earth. This is the basis for cosmic education, an overall approach to education that involves helping students develop an awareness that everything in the universe is connected and interdependent and forms a harmonious whole. Equally important is guiding students to understand that they themselves are part of and contribute to...

Follow the child, they will show you what they need to do, what they need to develop in themselves and what area they need to be challenged in. The aim of the children who persevere in their work with an object is certainly not to ‘learn’; they are drawn to it by the needs of their inner life, which must be recognized and developed by its means. —Maria Montessori In Montessori, we believe that the child is drawn to certain activities and that he instinctively knows what he needs. A child may try an activity and struggle with it initially. But he may return to it a little later with more success and then repeat it many times before mastering it. All of which may happen naturally without the interference of a teacher. Following The Child — Observing and Guiding Learning Montessori’s phrase “follow the child” does not mean you let the child do whatever she wants. Rather, it is an acknowledgment that the child has her own pattern. The key to understanding this idea is observation. As Monte...

One test of the correctness of educational procedure is the happiness of the child. —Maria Montessori What You Should Know About Your Child, p. 73. When adults talk about work, we often think of it in negative terms. We say “I have to go to work” rather than “I get to go to work.” We refer to weekdays as the “work week” and to our weekends as “play time” or as time to relax. We see work as that which we must do in order that we may enjoy ourselves later. The Montessori Environment Provides Opportunities to Explore through Play Play is the Work of Children The negative connotations we associate with work cause us to look perhaps a bit too harshly upon the use of the term in the Montessori context. “The child can develop fully by means of experience in his environment. We call such experiences ‘work.’” ( The Absorbent Mind , p. 88) We already know Dr. Montessori thought play was the important work of childhood. If you watch a child of three, you will see that he is always playing with...

A child’s play is not simply a reproduction of what he has experienced, but a creative reworking of the impressions he has acquired. — Lev Vygotsky, 2004. My six-year-old niece started kindergarten this year. She was thrilled! But then, within the first few days, something terrible happened. She was no longer the happy child who was enthusiastic about learning. She cried at the drop of a hat and refused to go back. When asked why, she told her parents, “It’s too much work. The day is too long. I’m too tired.” She also told them that she couldn't play anymore. Sadly, this is happening all over the world. Accountability by means of high stakes testing has mandated that playful learning be replaced by volumes of disconnected fact-based learning. Today, memorization has replaced true learning, with success being measured by test scores. Since when does sitting still and silent equal learning? Dr. Montessori tells us that how we learn makes a difference to what we learn. ... Does Natur...

…no one acting on the child from the outside can cause him to concentrate. Only he can organize his psychic life. — Maria Montessori The Absorbent Mind, p. 222. I have been involved with Montessori education for over 13 years. When I talk to prospective teachers or parents, I find that they always ask the same questions. They want to know about the materials, the idea of mixed age grouping, the ideal class size, the amount of adult involvement, and the concept of freedom. In chapter 22 of The Absorbent Mind , Dr. Montessori addresses all of these questions. The Absorbent Mind, Chapter 22: Social Development How were the Montessori materials chosen? Although the materials used in the environment were developed by Dr. Montessori, it was the children who chose which ones were important. “We started by equipping the child’s environment with a little of everything, and left the children to choose those things they preferred.” (p. 223) It seems that the children were partial to certain mater...

The results we obtain with our little ones contrast oddly with the fact that mathematics is so often held to be a scourge rather than pleasure in school programs. Most people have developed ‘mental barriers’ against it. Yet all is easy if only its roots can be implanted in the absorbent mind. — Maria Montessori The Absorbent Mind, p. 186. Dr. Montessori tells us that it is human nature to distinguish between and order our world based on similarities and differences of perceived qualities. The world around us is made of precise rules that follow an exact, measured order. “In our work, therefore, we have given a name to this part of the mind which is built up with exactitude, and we all it ‘the mathematical mind.’” (Montessori, p. 185) The Absorbent Mind Chapter 17: Further Elaboration, Part 3 - The Mathematical Mind Montessori created the Sensorial materials to provide a “system of materialized abstractions, or of mathematics.” (Montessori, p. 186) Each material clearly and concretely d...

Is the child’s mental horizon limited to what he sees? No. He has a type of mind that goes beyond the concrete. He has the great power of imagination. —Maria Montessori The Absorbent Mind, p. 175-76. One of the great arguments against Montessori is the idea that Montessori education is “anti-imagination.” I assure you, nothing can be further from the truth! Montessori believed that “picturing, or conjuring up, of things not physically present depends on a special mental ability of higher order.” (Montessori, p. 176) If our knowledge was based only on what can be gained through our senses, we would have a very shallow grasp of the world around us. When do children develop their imagination? During the first plane of development, children are very concrete thinkers. They must experience the world through their senses in order to process information about it. Montessori found that children who were 3–6 year olds could make abstract connections. For instance, children working with the San...

“When the child is given freedom to move about in a world of objects, he is naturally inclined to perform the tasks necessary for his development entirely on his own.” — Maria Montessori, Education and Peace There has been some buzz lately about the term heuristic. When I went online to check current definitions, I read on Merriam-Webster.com that heuristic is “currently in the top 1% of lookups and is the 154th most popular word on Merriam-Webster.com.” In fact, the site goes on to note that there has been a significant increase in people looking up the word “heuristic” in the last seven days. (Merriam-Webster.com) So, what does “heuristic” mean and what does it have to do with Montessori? Montessori as A Heuristic Approach to Learning Heuristic: using experience to learn and improve: involving or serving as an aid to learning, discovery, or problem-solving by experimental and especially trial-and-error methods: of or relating to exploratory problem solving techniques that utilize se...

“Children become like the things they love.” — Maria Montessori, The Absorbent Mind , p. 101 A carefully prepared environment is central to the teachings of Maria Montessori. We often think of the Montessori environment as the classroom itself. However, the environment extends to all of the conditions that influence the physical and mental growth of the child. Studying the Works of Montessori - The Absorbent Mind, Chapter 9: The First Days of Life Dr. Montessori was very clear about the environment needed immediately after birth. She states that for the first few days the infant should be in direct contact with the mother. The surroundings must not be harsh, since this is infant’s first experience after the moderated, safe surroundings of the womb. “There must not be too much contrast, as regards warmth, light, noise with his conditions before birth, where in his mother’s womb, there was perfect silence, darkness, and an even temperature.” (Montessori, p. 98) The bond of mother and inf...