Mamalina's Montessori Preschool and Childcare Centre Inc.

About Montessori

The Montessori Method was developed by Dr Maria Montessori, Italy's first female physician, circa 1897. Her method emphasizes a child's independence, deep respect for the child's natural psychological development, and freedom within set limits. Some key elements are:

1. It is based on years of patient observation of a child’s nature.
2. It has been proven to be of universal application.
3. It has revealed the small child as a lover of work, intellectual work, spontaneously chosen and carried out with profound joy.
4. It is based on the child’s impervious need to learn by doing.
5. While it offers the child a maximum of spontaneity, it nevertheless enables him to reach a higher level of scholastic attainment.
6. Though it does away with the necessity of coercion by means of rewards and punishments it achieves a higher discipline, one which originates within the child and not imposed from without.
7. It is based on a profound respect for the child’s personality and removes form him the pondering influence of the adult.
8. It enables the teacher to deal with each child individually in each subject and thus guide him according to his individual requirements.
9. Each child works at his own pace.
10. It does away with the competitive spirit and its train of harmful results.
11. Child works from his own free choice.
12. Finally, the Montessori Method develops the whole personality of the child, not merely his intellectual faculties but also his powers of deliberation, initiative and independent choice along with their emotional complements.

Environment

The environment is the centre of instructions in the Montessori Method. The “Practical Life” area is one of four general areas in this “Prepared Environment”. Activities here build on the child’s natural interest and help him develop good work habits, concentration, eye-hand coordination, a lengthened attention span and control of his body. The tabletop washing, for example, uses a circular motion that will be a base for later hand exercises such as drawing and writing. The pouring exercises help develop control of self in coordinating movements thus leading to independence. These exercises fall into four groups via:

• Elementary movements
• Care of person
• Care of environment (indoors and outdoors)
• Exercises of grace and courtesy

Language

In the “Language” area, tracing the outline of metal insets such as the quadrafoil prepares the hand and arm muscles for drawing and writing. Working with the individual letters of the movable alphabet, the child can match these with the sandpaper letters, tracing their shape on the sandpaper with his fingers thus reinforcing his visual recognition of the letters. Using small pictures, the child will then sound out and construct words with the letters. Since language is made up of sounds, it is necessary to understand words in their component sounds. Games are played with the child in order to make him conscious of the fact that words are composed of sounds.

Math

In the “Math” area, materials such as the numerical rods enable the child to get a physical sense of quantity and then to associate this with the numeral that is the symbol for that quantity. Spindle boxes give them a chance to reinforce this skill, counting from zero to nine and introduces the concept of sets. The decimal beads lead them to build up to the quantity of 1000 in a visible way and to learn the value of place. The apparatus for Math is divided into five Groups:

• Number Group
• Decimal Group
• Linear Group
• Memorization Group
• Abstraction Group

In Montessori schools we give children specially prepared concrete mathematical apparatus with which they work and absorb impressions and abstract the mathematical ideas which nobody can abstract for them. The children must themselves experience an inner illumination to have a clear concept of that particular mathematical principle. Dr. Montessori was a great believer of the dictum “Human mind is by nature mathematical”. She said, “Children display a universal love of mathematics which is a par excellence the science of precision, order and intelligence”. In Montessori schools we help the child gain concepts rather than work mechanically. By the time a child is six, he has a very clear understanding of the concepts involved in Mathematics.

Sensory

In the “Sensorial Area”, since ‘nothing comes to the intellect that is not first in the senses’, the Montessori environment provides a wide range of sensorial materials designed to help the child develop his ability to make judgments, to compare and discriminate on the basis of size, shape, weight, texture, colour and temperature; to store up impressions in his “muscular memory”, and to develop the use of certain emotions. There are jars to be sniffed for their aromas, sound cylinders to be listened to, colour tables to be arranged in gradation, block towers to be built and knobbed cylinders to be put in their places. Sensorial education serves as a help in the overall development and establishes meaningful contact with the environment.