- First woman in Italy to be trained and graduated from medical school as a doctor
- Feminist
- Radically critical of the greed of bankers and builders who created the slums where she placed her Children’s Houses
- She was also someone (like Pestalozzi & Froebel) who actually worked with young children!
- Child-size tables, chairs, etc.
- A house for children, not a school
- Learning to read and write without direct instruction
- All children have potential
- Botany, zoology, math, geography were added to the curriculum
- Experiences were important in her school
- Initiated new early childhood education program
- Historically children were treated as primitive beings, or miniature adults
- She says: the child should not be regarded as a feeble and helpless creature.
- Respect and learning through spontaneous activity.
- Exercises were to function like a ladder -allowing the child to pick up the challenge and to judge their progress.
- ‘The essential thing is for the task to arouse such an interest that it engages the child’s whole personality
- Respect for the Child
- The Absorbent Mind
- Children are not educated by others.
- Simply by continuing to live, child learns to speak his/her native tongue.
- From birth to 3 years-the unconscious absorbent mind develops the senses used for seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling and touching.
- Sensitive Periods
- There are sensitive periods when children are more susceptible to certain behaviors and can learn specific skills more easily.
- The Prepared Environment
- The purpose of prepared environmentis to make children independent of adults.
- Freeedom is an essential character of prepared environment.
- Children are provided with real, workable, child-sized tools of everyday activities in the environment.
- Objects such as child-sized brooms, dust pans, glassware
- Self or Autoeducation
- Montessori referred to the concept that children are capable of educating themselves as autoeducation.
- Children who are actively involved in a prepared environment and exercising freedom of choice literally educate themselves.
- The role freedom plays in self-education is crucial.
- The art of teaching includes preparing the environment so that children by participating in it educate themselves
- Practical life Sensory materials for sensory training
- Academic materials for teaching reading, writing and mathematics
- Sensory materials were designed with purpose in mind
- They originated from Montessori’s own design and adapted from the work of Jean Itiard and Edouard Seguin
- Characteristics of Sensory Materials
- Control of error
- Materials are designed in a way that children can see if they make a mistake
- Isolation of single qualities
- Other variables are held constant except for the isolated quality or qualities
- Active involvement
- Materials encourage active involvement rather than the more passive process of looking
- Attractiveness
- Materials are attractive with colors and proportions that appeal to children
- Control of error
- According to Montessori many children were ready for writing at four years of age. It is not uncommon to see 4 and 5 year old writing and reading in a Montessori Classroom.
- Role of Teacher
- Teachers should live in the same neighborhood where they teach. And be available as role-models … ‘as a cultured and educated person’ … to the community.
- The Nature of Learning
- Learning is inductive. Moving from the particular to the general.
- Learning is hands-on
- ‘Movement, manipulation, and the isolated training of the senses develop the capacity for thought.’
- The emphasis was on children working individually with materials
- Materials were to be ‘self-administered and self-correcting
- Learning materials should be simple, interesting to children, self-correcting, and must be understood by teachers.
Makaleskop 