Dr. Maria Montessori was the first woman to have become a Doctor of Medicine in Italy. As a physician her first educational encounter with children took place in a psychiatric clinic in Rome. These children were labeled as “mentally retarded”. It was here were she realized the potential and capabilities of these children. After careful observation and experiment she came to the conclusion that their minds had never been stimulated. They were locked away with no sensory stimulation what-so-ever. The methods to her approach now begin to unravel to tell her story. It is a unique method of education designed to take advantage of the child’s sensitive periods. The period between birth and six years of age which has been found to be the most impressionable. The child has what Montessori would call it an absorbent mind. Unconsciously soaking up information from their environment learning about it at a rapid rate. This ability to learn is unique to the young child and is significant to the development of their being. The impressions made on the child’s mind actually shape and form the child emotionally, cognitively and behaviorally. During the sensitive period of life the child discovers by touching, seeing, smelling, tasting and exploring . Montessori realized that all children have an inborn motivation to learn, an innate desire which is fulfilled through their senses. Identifying with these universal characteristics of a child, she devised educational materials and methods based on her belief that children learn best by doing. This in her time was quite different than the conventional passively accepting other people’s ideas and preexisting knowledge. In short, plain old listening was not enough to stimulate, cultivate and develop the young mind. And so forth lies the basis of Dr. Maria Montessori’s new method of teaching. The Montessori method gained great recognition all over the world. It stems from her discovery of the importance of the school environment and the role it could play in changing the child’s behavior. Putting together into play all the other aspects of child development she had learned she created the “prepared environment”. A dynamic, interactive learning environment was created. It encouraged each child to reason, cooperate, collaborate, negotiate and to understand. In the special environment prepared…. in our schools, the children themselves found a sentence that expresses the inner need…
“Help me to do it by myself!” Maria Montessori, The Secret of Childhood
The prepared environment is a place of thoughtful planning. An attention to detail an intricate blend of order and purpose.. The materials, each with their own developmental skill are displayed in such a way that keeps the environment accessible, inviting, and in proper order. This system of preparation is continually perfected to rouse and sustain the children’s attention. In an address given by Montessori to the National Education Association dated 1915 she states,”To be able to choose objects that will interest and hold the attention of the child is to know the means of aiding it in its mental growth.” In her second newspaper article she says, “Little novel occupations were everywhere available. I was like a Turk in a bazaar.”
The child has the freedom to move about the classroom to be independent to work with what interests him at his/her own pace. As each task becomes mastered so does the patterns of concentration and inner discipline evolve. A life long attribute that will remain with the child , a building block laid down early in life, a wonderful habit; To be adamant…. is to succeed. Using an example of a child working with cylinders, she goes on to say,”That which interests the child is not only the sense of handling the objects, but the conscious acquisition of a new power of discrimination, that of recognizing the differences of dimensions among cylinders, the differences which at first he did not perceive.” With the materials devised and the guidance of the teacher the Montessori method was a success. The basic concepts that were introduced such as arrangement of objects from large to small, top to bottom, left to right , concrete to abstract developed skills that became fundamental building blocks to aid in the complex type of reading, writing and mathematics that lied ahead.
“The child can only develop by means of experience in his environment. We call such experience work…”
Dr. Maria Montessori
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