What is the Montessori Method?

The Montessori way of teaching sees children as they really are and creates an environment which fosters the fulfillment of their highest potential - spiritual, emotional, physical, and intellectual - as members of a family, a school, and the world community.

The Montessori environment contains specially designed, manipulative materials that invite children to engage in learning activities of their own individual choice. Under the guidance of a trained Montessori teacher, children in a Montessori classroom learn by making discoveries with the materials, cultivating concentration, motivation, self-discipline, and a love of learning.

Dr. Maria Montessori gave the world a scientific method, practical and tested, for bringing forth the very best in young human beings. She taught children how to respect individual differences, and to emphasize social interaction and the education of the whole personality rather than the teaching of a specific body of knowledge.

The Montessori curriculum is always up-to-date and dynamic because observation and the meeting of needs is continual and specific for each child. When physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional needs are met children glow with excitement and a drive to play and work with enthusiasm, to learn, and to create. They exhibit a desire to teach, help, and care for others and for their environment.

The high level of academic achievement so common in Montessori schools is a natural outcome of experience in such a supportive environment. The Montessori method of education is a model that serves the needs of children of all levels of mental and physical ability as they live and learn in a natural, mixed-age group, which is very much like the society they will live in as adults.

The potential of the child is not just mental, but is revealed only when the complete "Montessori method" is understood and followed. The child's choice, practical work, care of others and the environment, and above all the high levels of concentration reached when work is respected and not interrupted, reveal a human being that is superior not only academically, but emotionally and spiritually, a child who cares deeply about other people and the world, and who works to discover a unique and individual way to contribute. This is the essence of real "Montessori" method.

Who is Maria Montessori, M.D.?

Maria Montessori, born in 1870, was the first woman in Italy to receive a medical degree. She worked in the fields of psychiatry, education and anthropology. She believed that each child is born with a unique potential to be revealed, rather than as a "blank slate" waiting to be written upon. Her main contributions to the work of those of us raising and educating children:

• Preparing the most natural and life supporting environment for the child
• Observing the child living freely in this environment
• Continually adapting the environment in order that the child may fulfill his greatest potential -- physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.