Theory

Observation Notes Unlike usual classroom teachers, the Montessori adult has a dual role of observer and teacher.  To offer Assistantial  Assistance and be Child Centred the Directress must take her cues from the child and for this she needs to observe the infant in her most natural state.  From these observations the adult can form …

Along side presentations the knowledge of names can be conveyed to children in exceptional events known as ‘Three Period Lessons’.  They are points of arrival, acknowledging the child’s experiential learning with the Sensorial materials either because her need for this has arisen or because it is anticipated.  The ‘Three Period Lessons’ are offered individually, consent …

Montessori’s vision for development includes the whole human life, from conception to death, to account for the formation of man she divides the first 24 years of life into 4 planes, after 24 years an individual continues to develop.  Once each plane ends the phase preceding it becomes hard to re-imagine and the learning, or …

Education for Peace, Values, and Rights and Responsibilities cannot be taught didactically but through the child’s experience of her ‘link of love’ which connects her to the environment. Montessori described Peace education as, “constructive social reform”, her aim was to Educate Society through the Education of Man, based on a child’s arising tendencies. Co-operation cannot …

The Montessori Adult’s action must be guided by the Assistantial Approach this, ensuring that the Prepared Environment stimulates her freedom and allows her to work at boosting her freedoms and creativities.  The adult’s activities should protect the achievements already made and all the capacities a learner has already acquired for themselves and show their faith …

The Director is an adult who has been specially trained and is able to respond to the child when the needs of his inner child become stimulated and concentrated.  To help the child towards normalisation the Director is in constant contact with the child linking him to the environment, directing his untapped energies and helping …

The child’s natural love for her social and physical environment sparks the potential for absorption and an intense attraction in those aspects of her environment which are stable and alive, this attraction during Sensitives Period allows her to meet her needs by manifesting her tendencies and potentials as periods of development. Sensitive Periods are globally …

The Absorbent Mind is the name Montessori gives to the child under six years because she felt the infant has a qualitatively different mind than that of the older child and adult. The Absorbent Mind is dominated by a love for the environment, social norms and those people a child is born to, referred to …

The Directress follows the Assistantial Approach, it is child centred, learner focused, it empowers action.  It is an approach in which the educator has power-with the learner, not power-over her.  The role of the Directress is to remove obstacles to naturally unfolding development, not to hurry it.  Freedom for the learner is necessary, including the …

The Prepared Environment is both a physical space and the intangible properties necessary for an organism to thrive, reach and fulfil it’s physical, spiritual, emotional and psychical potentials.  For the human, assuming it’s mother is healthy, the womb provides a perfect prepared environment, where it’s body and senses of movement and hearing can begin developing, …