Montessori is a philosophy of education formulated by Dr. Maria Montessori (1970 – 1952), an Italian physician who had a particular genius for observing children as they are, rather than as adults wish them to be. She felt that the goal of early childhood education should not be to fill children...
Montessori is a philosophy of education formulated by Dr. Maria Montessori (1970 – 1952), an Italian physician who had a particular genius for observing children as they are, rather than as adults wish them to be. She felt that the goal of early childhood education should not be to fill children with an assortment of pre-selected facts, but rather to cultivate their own natural desire to learn. With the hand being the primary teacher of the child, the Montessori classroom is a meticulously designed and cared for environment where the child can handle and manipulate materials that demonstrate basic universal concepts. The beautiful and orderly equipment invites him to do this at his own period of interest and readiness. Through this enriched environment, children learn to read, write and calculate in the same way that they learn to walk and talk – one experiential step after another, teaching themselves.
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%newline%A Montessori classroom is a unique delicately balanced community of young people between three and seven years of age in which the absorbent mind is allowed the freedom to work and assimilate without pressure or interruption. Generally, a child starting at three years of age will venture into reading between the ages of four and vie. He explores creative writing between the ages of five and seven. As the entire program is sequential and is designed for the sensitive periods of the young child, optimum results cannot be expected for a child who misses the early years of three and four, or for a child who does not complete the entire program.
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%newline%It is an unfortunate historical fact that the term \"Montessori\" was never copyrighted and is therefore widely and freely used to describe any environment that uses Montessori materials or that is unstructured. To protect the efforts, philosophy and methodology of Dr. Montessori, the Association of Montessori Internaionale (AMI), the accrediting agency for the original Montessori program, visits affiliated schools every three years to ensure that high standards are maintained and that all teachers are AMI certified.
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