What is Montessori?
Montessori is an approach to education with the fundamental belief that a child learns best within a social environment which supports and respects each individual's unique development.

What makes Montessori Education Unique?
How Does it Work?
How is Creativity Encouraged?
How Did It Begin?
Additional Information?

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What makes Montessori Education Unique?

1. The "Whole Child" Approach. The primary goal of a Montessori program is to help each child reach full potential in all areas of life. Activities promote the development of social skills, emotional growth, and physical coordination as well as cognitive preparation. The holistic curriculum, under the direction of a specially prepared teacher, allows the children to experience the joy of learning, time to enjoy the process and ensure the development of self-esteem, and provides the experience from which children create their knowledge.
2. The "Prepared Environment." In order for self-directed learning to take place, the whole learning environment -room, materials, and social climate-must be supportive of the learner. The teacher provides necessary resources, including opportunities for children to function in a safe and positive climate. The teacher thus gains the children's trust, which enables, them to try new things and build self-confidence.
3. The Montessori Materials. Dr. Montessori's observations of the kinds of things that children enjoy and go back to repeatedly led her to design a number of multisensory, sequential and self-correcting materials that facilitate the learning of skills and lead to learning of abstract ideas.
4. The Teacher. The Montessori teacher functions as a designer of the environment, resource person, role model, demonstrator, record-keeper, and meticulous observer of each child's behavior and growth. The teacher acts as a facilitator of learning.

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How Does it Work?
Every program has its set of ground rules which differs from age to age, but is always based on core Montessori beliefs-respect for each other and the environment.

Children are free to work at their own pace with materials they have chose, either alone or with others. The teacher relies on his or her observations of the children to determine which new activities and materials may be introduced to an individual child or to a small or large group. The aim is to encourage active, self-directed learning and to strike a balance of individual mastery within small group collaboration within the whole group community.

The multi-year span in each class provides a family-like grouping where learning can take place naturally. More experienced children share what they have learned while reinforcing their own learning. Because this peer group learning is intrinsic to Montessori, there is often more conversation language experiences in the Montessori classroom than in conventional early education settings.

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How is Creativity Encouraged?
Creativity flourishes in an atmosphere of acceptance and trust. Montessorians recognize that all children, from toddlers to teenager, learn and express themselves in varying individual ways.

Music, art, storytelling, movement and drama activities are integrated into American Montessori programs. But there are other things particular to the Montessori environment which encourages creative development: many materials which stimulate interest and involvement; an emphasis on the sensory aspect of experience; and opportunities for both verbal and non-verbal modes of learning.

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How Did It Begin?
Dr. Maria Montessori, the creator of what is called "The Montessori Method of Education," based this approach on her scientific observations of young children's behavior. As the first women physician to graduate from the University of Rome, Montessori became involved with education as a doctor treating children labeled as mentally handicapped. Then, in 1907, she was invited to open a child care center for children of desperately poor families in the San Lorenzo slums of Rose.

She called it a "Children's House" and based the program on her observations that young children learn best in a homelike setting, filled with developmentally appropriate materials that provide experiences contributing to the growth of self-motivated, independent learners.

Montessori's dynamic theories included such innovative premises as:

1. Children are to be respected as different from adults and as individuals who are different from one another.
2. Children create themselves through purposeful activity.
3. The most important years for learning are from birth to age six.
4. Children possess unusual sensitivity and mental powers for absorbing and learning from the environment, which includes people, as well as materials.

She carried her message throughout the world, including the United States , as early as 1912. An enthusiastic first response in the U.S. resulted in a reintroduction of the method in the mid-1950's, and then was followed by the organization of the American Montessori Society in 1960.

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Additional Information?
Visit the American Montessori Society website at www.amshq.org for additional information, readings, and resources.

American Montessori Society
281 Park Avenue South , 6Fl.
New York , NY 10010
212.358.1250
www.amshq.org

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Additional Websites

Montessori: The International Index
http://www.montessori.edu/

American Montessori Consulting
http://www.amonco.org/

Montessori: The Science behind the Genius
http://www.montessori-science.org/

North American Montessori Teacher's Association
http://www.montessori-namta.org

Montessori in America Slideshow:
A Century of Reform at the Margins
http://www.slideshare.net/mkwhi2/montessori-in-america

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