The Montessori movement
Developed by Dr. Maria Montessori, the Montessori movement is based on careful observation of and respect for the natural development of the child. We respect children's natural curiosity and exploration through the senses and movements, and encourage their freedom to achieve through order and self-discipline.
Within the carefully structured order of the Montessori classroom, the children choose activities throughout the day, discovering their own pattern of learning and social interaction. Adult authority acts as a background for free development. When the child is encouraged to develop understanding, compassion, and respect, they are able to cultivate their own self-awareness and style of learning.
Montessori objectives
- To help children develop their own individuality, so that they can strive toward their potential
- To enable children to create a social structure that honors their contrasting needs as individuals and as a group, and that makes their roles as individuals and as part of the group complementary
- To guide each child along a path of development and education that is natural to them so that they may remain attuned to their own nature, nurture a reverence for the organic order of the universe, and become a whole and integrated human being who is both instrumental in their own growth and sensitive to the needs of all people
Practical life activities
Practical life is the area of development in which children come to master their physical environment and their own physical being. Children are provided materials they can use to create, control, change, or care for the classroom and themselves. Because practical life activities are the foundation of the child's future as a whole person, it is the most basic and essential area of Montessori development.
Practical life activities have three goals:
- To bring the child to respect and love the physical world, both natural and human-made
- To develop the techniques and skills that are basic for other areas of the child's development
- To unite a child's growing body, developing intelligence, and strengthening will
Choice of activity
Choice of activity is essential for a child. A child acts upon her decision with intelligence, using her body and environment in an act of work. This process of work — freely chosen, performed with self-discipline, utilizing physical skills in an intelligent way — is the child's daily product. Through their work, the free child creates the free adult.
Sensorial exercises
Sensorial exercises employ an extensive set of materials, each of which isolates and then expands upon one sensorial property: shape, weight, texture, pitch, and so on. The various sensorial properties are matched, graded, or contrasted. The sensorial work allows the child to develop a sensory awareness and organize what he perceives in order to form concepts and abstractions.
The purpose of sensorial exercises is threefold:
- The satisfaction of the work with the materials
- The ability to perceive one's environment with sensitivity and intelligence
- The appreciation of the natural order that intelligent awareness cultivates in one's life
Intellectual work
Intellectual work in math and language develops from the concrete sensorial materials, which the child manipulates in practical processes. This manipulation forms the foundation for the use of symbols to represent both the concrete and the process itself. We want the child to have the experience first and then to use the symbols that represent it. With the symbols, the child finally begins to communicate what they know and do. In this way, the child's school life is not divorced from reality and does not become something apart from life but rather a natural development of her or his individual being.
Arithmetic, geography, reading and writing, grammar and syntax, music, art, algebra, and geometry are developed in gradual stages — from the concrete sensorial to the abstract conceptual through sequential materials.
