What is Montessori Education?

Montessori is a method of education that is designed to be child-centered, using each individual child’s innate curiosity to facilitate exploration and learning. The Montessori method follows the child and supports their internal drive to learn by offering an individualized curriculum.

What is the Montessori Method of Teaching?

For children under the age of 6 years, Montessori education emphasizes hands-on activities. Preschool classrooms provide materials that invite children to learn with all their senses. They hold concrete objects in their hands, facilitating the connections between the hands and the mind in support of their learning.

By seeing, touching, and manipulating concrete objects, they build their vocabulary and their understanding of the world around them.

What is the Montessori Approach?

The Montessori approach to learning is child-led and hands-on. Teachers create lesson plans around the needs and interests of the individual students in their classroom. Materials in the classroom are made of natural materials – wood, metal, and glass – and use the child’s natural inclination to work with their hands in learning across the curriculum. Montessori is also committed to providing a peaceful and supportive environment for everyone in the classroom. Respect for the child is demonstrated in each interaction with the adults in the classroom. Peaceful conflict resolution is modeled and taught, helping even the youngest children express their feelings and find mutually satisfactory solutions to disagreements.

The origins: Maria Montessori

Dr. Maria Montessori was the first woman to complete medical school in Italy. Her early work was in a hospital for children deemed uneducable. During this time she observed the natural inclinations of these young children and developed methods for teaching them that successfully supported their learning and development. When she was asked to establish a childcare center in an impoverished area of Rome she applied these same strategies for supporting the learning and development of these young children. Her Casa del Bambini was so successful it became a model that spread worldwide. Dr. Montessori wrote extensively about child development and her method of supporting their education. She established the Association Montessori Internationale (AMI) and a teacher training program that spread throughout the world. Today there are Montessori schools in 110 countries around the globe.

Montessori Parenting

It is common to find that the Montessori approach to supporting student learning “spills over” to their home environment. Students accustomed to independently caring for themselves and their classroom environment at school are eager to be independent at home. Parents of Montessori children are encouraged to support their children’s desire for independence by providing opportunities to care for themselves and their environment at home. For young children, providing low shelves and an uncluttered play area allows them to choose their activity and then return it to its proper place when they are done with it. Children can also participate in many of the daily tasks that are part of everyday family life. With cutlery in a low drawer, even a two-year-old can help set the table for a family meal. Families often find that the Montessori approach is more than simply a method of education, but is a lifestyle that encourages individual independence, supports individual interests and social-emotional growth, and values peaceful interactions with others.

Cultivating excellence