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Dr. Maria Montessori
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 Dr.
Maria Montessori founded her first “Casa Dei Bambini” in Rome,
Italy in January 1907. After graduating as the first female
doctor in Italy, Dr. Montessori began her life’s work as an
educator. She applied the diligent observational skills and
ceaseless quest for truth that she had learned in her
scientific training to her interest in children. Throughout
her life Dr. Montessori traveled the globe, studying children
of all cultures and social strata and developed a universal
education, today known as the Montessori Method.
There are two main
concepts which Dr. Maria Montessori developed with regard to
the child's development and growth. These developments are the
most basic essentials of her philosophy. These are the
concepts of the Absorbent Mind
and the Sensitive Periods.
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Dr. Montessori observed that
the first six years of children's lives are directed by their
absorbent minds. She divided this six- year time span into two
three- year periods. The first three years she calls unconscious
learning and the second three years conscious learning.
During the first three years
of life children absorb and take in all that is around them in
their environment. They absorb impressions from the environment,
creating themselves. Dr. Montessori said, "the child takes in his
whole environment, not with his mind but with his life". The task
of adults around the child in this stage of development is not to
intervene but to provide a safe rich environment for the child.
As children grow into
consciousness they focus on what their bodies are doing. This
focusing results in the development of conscious effort. At about
the age of three, children respond in a more conscious way to the
natural urge within themselves, to be more active. They use their
hands with more purpose and direction. Dr. Montessori calls the
children's hands the instruments of their brains. During this time
period from age three to six children develop their wills and
their memory. They now reach out and purposefully gain further
impressions from their environment. Adults, by preparing the
environment, can direct the children and help them to focus their
attention on aspects of the whole environment which they have
previously absorbed unconsciously.
Dr. Montessori saw in her
observations of children that certain sensitive periods occur;
these sensitive periods are related to certain elements in the
environment to which children are irresistibly drawn. Children are
attracted only to certain elements in the environment for a short
time, as one sensitivity recedes another sensitivity arises to
take its place.
The purpose of each sensitive
period, which is actually an inner sensibility possessed by
children, is to help them acquire a certain skill or
characteristic necessary for their growth. As they acquire the
skill or characteristic, their sensitivity for it decreases and
another sensitivity increases.
All sensitive periods are
related in that each provides a foundation for the next. Together,
the sensitive periods help children to make sense out of what they
and the work around them are all about.
Some examples of sensitive
periods in each child's development are:
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Children, ages 2 to 4, possess a sensitivity to movement; they
have to move about in their environment in order to learn.
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The sensitivity to order of the child of two to three relates to
order in time and space. Children at this age are very aware of
irregularities in their environment; they notice things that are
out of place. They cannot live in disorder because they are
constructing themselves from elements in their environment. Order
is the child's foundation for making sense out of his or her
environment.
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One of
the longest-lasting sensitive periods is that of the sensitivity
to language. First, out of all the sounds in their environment
infants are attracted to human sounds; from these they learn to
speak their native language. Later, a child moves to sensitivity
to the construction of language.
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The
sensitivity to sensory impressions occurs as children
spontaneously investigate and reach out to their world. They see,
they touch, they feel, they smell, they taste, they hear. They
seek to find out about their world by using, developing, and
refining their powers of sensory discrimination.
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