A truly educated individual continues learning long after the hours and years the child spends in the classroom because the child is motivated from within by a natural curiosity and love for knowledge. Dr. Montessori felt that the goal of early childhood education should not be to fill the child with facts from a pre-selected course of studies, but rather “to cultivate the child’s own natural desire to learn”.
In the Montessori classroom this is approached in two ways:
By allowing each child to experience the excitement of learning by the child’s own choice rather than being coerced.
By helping the child to perfect all his natural tools for self-directed learning so that the child’s ability will be at maximum in future learning situations.
The Montessori materials have this dual long-range purpose in addition to their immediate purpose of giving specific information to the child. The use of the materials is based on the young child’s unique aptitude for learning that Montessori identified as the absorbent mind. In a sense, the materials invite the children to learn at their own periods of interest and readiness.
The teacher observes the individual child and determines when the child is ready for the appropriate materials. She carefully watches the progress of each child and keeps a record of each child’s work with the materials.
The Montessori classroom can be divided into specialized areas:
- Practical Life
- Sensorial
- Math
- Language
- Geography
- Music and Art
- Practical Life
Practical LIfe
The Practical Life area of the classroom provides a link to the child’s home environment and thus is a natural extension of the child’s developmental process. The exercises or activities found here are familiar to the children as many of them have been observed at home. Pouring, polishing, dusting and sweeping provide the child with a link to home.
The Practical materials also fulfill specific purposes in the real world for children. They learn to button their shirts, tie or buckle their shoes, wash their hands – all free from adult help. The child also learns to care for the beauty of their environment to which they are naturally drawn: polishing silver, arranging flowers and caring for the plants.
Completing exercises in Practical Life ensures the child with a sense of accomplishment and independence. A child gains dignity and a sense of his/her own worth.
Sensorial
Children live in a world of senses. Through the senses the child gains knowledge, becomes more aware of his environment and grows in consciousness. The aim of the sensorial materials through its inherent qualities of precision and exactness is to refine the senses.
The child is able to bring order and system to the impressions he/she has already gathered. Materials refine the child’s motor coordination, help visual discrimination, refine the senses, and deepen concentration.
Through what appears to be ‘play’, the children compare dimensions, classify shapes and discriminate between size and color. All these are an indirect preparation for reading, writing and math.
Language
In the Montessori environment the child “meets” the alphabet through the Sandpaper Letters. The child traces the letter and learns the sound. Having a muscular impression and through recital and repetition the child fixes the path of the letters in his memory.
Once the child is very comfortable with phonetic words phonograms such as ‘sh’, ‘oo’, and ‘th’ are presented. The tools for reading and writing are provided to the child and it is their own interest and progress that determines the next series of lessons.
Mathematics
The child’s first introduction to numbers is made with a set of red and blue rods representing the quantities one through ten. The Sandpaper Numbers are then presented at the same time and when both are known well the association between the two is made. Various materials help the child to internalize the concept of one to ten.
Next the decimal systems is presented to the child using the Golden Beads: units, tens, hundreds and thousands. Soon the student begins to learn the four mathematical operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Mathematical facts are learned by the children actually performing the operations with concrete materials.
Cultural Extensions
The Montessori classroom offers many opportunities for young children to expand their knowledge during the years when they are motivated by spontaneous interest. The Large Wooden Puzzle Maps are most popular with the children; the introductory map of the world has a separate puzzle piece for each continent. The remaining maps have pieces representing countries, provinces or states. Names of countries are learned along with climate, size, customs, and languages.
Flags of countries are studied. Nature cards, illustrating animals from each continent and plant life are introduced. Land and Water forms are concretely represented and the children have fun pouring water into each form and learning the names of them.
Art and Music
The teacher introduces the children to art through reproductions of famous paintings, discussion and study of the great artists. We look at concepts such as subject, colour, light, shadow, lines, geometric shapes, and more. She shares stories about the times, the period and the lives of the artists. We practice with various types of water, tempera, and acrylic paints, as well as crayons, pencil crayons, chalk, pastels and more. A dedicated art shelf holds all materials and is available to the children to access any time.
The more experience children have in art, the more they are able to express themselves.
Music is the same and the Montessori bells offer widened avenues for musical exploration. The purpose is to introduce children to discrimination of musical sounds by pairing and ordering and this way they become forms of exploration and a musical instrument for the children to play. Songs and other musical instruments are introduced regularly in the classroom. Rhythm is explored through movement on the line, hopping, skipping, and marching. Classical music played in the classroom brings to the child’s awareness various sounds of instruments and composers.