Just a little update on my life... I have mentioned before that I am in the process of completing my Montessori Certificate. I have finished my curriculum portion of the training. So I have all of my albums for Practical Life, Sensorial, Math, and Language completed. YAY! I am very proud of them. Right now I am still in school to finish my Bachelor's degree in Child and Adolescent Development. Consequently, I cannot start my practicum portion of the training until January. However, I am attending weekly classes on the Montessori Philosophy, Classroom Leadership, and Cultural Subjects. I thought I would give some weekly updates so I can share what I am learning with you. I have such a passion for the Montessori philosophy and I can't think of a better way to share the Montessori Method.
Maria Montessori was an Italian woman who grew up with a strong desire to become well educated. She was the first woman to attend and graduate from Medical School. The two most influential philosophers in her life were Jean Itard and Edward Segund. From Jean Itard she took the idea about the different sensitive periods of the child, which is the idea that a child is more receptive to learning something at very crucial times in his or her development. Edward Segund was the first to believe that mentally challenged children had some sort of illness in their nervous sytem. He believed certain organs in the child were not communicating with the nervous system properly, and in order to wake them up, the children needed to have stimulation through their senses. Montessori took both ideas, the sensitive periods and the sensory stimulation, and put them together to develop her philosophy. This is what is so crazy to me. Everything in the child development world concerning special needs children is about sensory integration.
Montessori got it so long ago! She was an amazing thinker.
Montessori spent the first part of her career working at a psychiatric hospital in Rome. There she carefully observed children with special needs. She observed these children taking notes and writing down everything that she saw.
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| Beautifully prepared environment! |
Maria Montessori opened her first Children's House, called Casa Dei Bambini, for underprivileged children in Italy. She had developed materials for the classroom when she was working with children with special needs. She thought she would try how typical children would handle these materials. She would set up the classroom and observe what choices the children made. Taking notes about what the children liked and what the children did not like. If something needed to be fixed or changed, she would adjust it. This is where the Montessori Classroom became so crucial. The "prepared environment" within in the classroom becomes the teacher. The children learn not through the teacher, but through their environment which their teacher has set up for them. A true Montessori classroom should be set up in such a way that the children can function and learn without any help from the teacher. The teacher is there for guidance and scaffolding, but the environment is the true teacher.
Through observation Montessori realized that the children were industrious. They liked to sweep, to clean, to do work. They were happy to do it. They began to take pride over their environment. The children looked after one another and worked as one social group. Another observation Montessori made was that the children began to repeat an exercise over and over. She noted that they enjoyed doing it. It was not the end product that they sought, but the process of completion was what attracted them to the exercise again and again. An example I like to use is when an adult is at the beach. When he digs a hole, he digs it as fast as he can, because he wants to be able to say he completed the task. A child, however, when digging the same hole will take their time, enjoying the sand, the shovel, maybe even some water that comes into the hole. As soon as the child is done with that hole, they will start to dig another. It is amazing how children love to repeat things. Montessori believed that they would keep choosing an exercise because they have not learned everything they possibly could yet from that exercise. They will keep making that choice until one day they are done with it. They will have gotten everything they can from that exercise, and then they will be ready to move on to something new.
After Montessori started Casa Dei Bambini she travelled the world teaching the Montessori Method and educating those who were interested in hearing. Throughout Europe, Montessori was highly appreciated. However, in the USA her movement didn't catch on. Montessori was actually highly frowned upon until the 1960s or so when Nancy Rambusch began the American Montessori Society. It is unlike any other early education philosophy and I look forward to share more of what I learning during my training with you!
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