Dr. Maria Montessori was born in Italy in 1870 and died in The Netherlands in 1952, after a lifetime devoted to the study of child development. Maria Montessori's philosophy regards each child as a unique creation with a unique contribution to make to humanity.
Our Montessori programme will emphasise your child's initiative and indepedence, allowing him or her to progress through an orderly series of structed learning activities at his or her own pace. Special materials are employed that emphasise the use of all the senses in learning.
The Montessori Method
Dr. Montessori believed that education must be a "help to life." The goal of her method is to prepare a child for real life rather than just for school. The Montessori Method is based on three interdependent components: the child, the teacher (or as Montessori called her, the "directress") and the prepared environment.
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The Teacher is a trained professional who acts to facilitate learning. Using his or her knowledge of child development and the Montessori materials, he or she designs the environment; acts as a resource person, role model, and demonstrator of materials; and is a careful observer and record keeper of each child's growth, behaviour, and needs.
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The Prepared Environment provides a purposeful place for learning. Everything within the environment is designed for the child. This is why the teacher has no desk, nor even an adult-sized chair. The furniture, shelves, and even the paintings on the walls are at a child's height. Each material is prepared by the teacher so that by using the work, the child may absorb the lesson built into it. The works are constantly updated to meet the child's need for new challenges. Thus the environment, through the teacher, responds to the children as they develop.
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The Child chooses the activities prepared by the teacher, interacts with the other children and adults in the environment, and all the while is learning. Dr. Montessori adopted from biology the term "sensitive periods" to describe what she observed about how children learn.
Montessori found that there are periods of intense sensitivity of short duration when the child shows unusual capabilities for acquiring certain skills and/or knowledge (seemingly to the exclusion of all else for that period of time).
Each sensitive period has as its aim the development of a specific ability and the acquisition of a determined characteristic. Once this characteristic has evolved, the corresponding sensitivity disappears—never to return again!