What is Montessori?

Maria Montessori

Montessori and ‘Mainstream’ Education

Benefits

Our Special Montessori Environment

WHAT IS MONTESSORI?

MARIA MONTESSORI

Born in Italy in 1870, Montessori studied first engineering and then medicine. She became the first woman doctor in Italy which was no mean feat for a woman in the late nineteenth century. While working in the psychiatric clinic her interest in children developed and she went on to become a pioneer in modern education.

She opened her first nursery in a slum area of Rome in 1907. The sensational results that she achieved brought her fame and international recognition. Montessori travelled, lecturing and organising training courses and from 1912 schools began to appear around the world.

Today the Montessori method of teaching children is still used throughout the world and is as relevant now as it was in Montessori’s day. Many of her innovative ideas have filtered into mainstream classrooms.

MONTESSORI AND ‘MAINSTREAM’ EDUCATION

Our nursery is assessed to the same Ofsted standards as other settings and we far exceed their requirements.

The individual learning plans now used as standard which follow the children to their next school have been a feature in our nursery for many years and indeed the new requirement for all schools to teach reading using the phonic method has been successfully used by Montessori Schools for 100 years.

We find that our children move on to their next schools whether private or state, with confidence in their own abilities and are more able to focus on tasks and complete them than other children. Many of them will already know the sounds of the letters of the alphabet, some will already be reading simple reading books and they will have a sound basis in mathematics. Our Montessori Nursery has given them the foundations for life across a broad spectrum of topics and skills. It is on these foundations that all future learning will be built.

BENEFITS

‘By understanding how children learn, and providing them with tools and opportunities tailored to the way they experience the world around them the Montessori approach allows children to learn through understanding rather than through being told. From understanding comes confidence and a joy in learning.

‘At the same time there is a strongly physical dimension to many Montessori activities, encouraging dexterity, balance and appreciation of shapes, colours and sizes. In its approach to language and mathematics, in particular, Montessori begins with concrete examples to illuminate abstract concepts – gradually building to a deep and permanent understanding of what most adults take for granted.

‘What all these elements have in common is that they are providing the building blocks of future learning, hardwiring a child’s capacity to engage with new material and information and providing the tools with which to manipulate it. Montessori is, literally, learning for life.’ *

OUR SPECIAL MONTESSORI ENVIRONMENT

Maria Montessori’s observations of the children’s instinctive learning and natural development inspired her to design her special classroom environment and develop a new, much less dominant role for the teaching staff. This enables the children to be more independent, which in turn leads to self-confidence and high self esteem.

You will notice as soon as you enter our nursery school the attractive and neat environment with vases of flowers on the tables as well as the calm, quiet hum of busy concentration. Children in our nursery are encouraged to have a sense of social responsibility and belonging to a group. They tidy up after themselves and each other and older children readily help younger children. All the materials are of very high quality, usually made of wood and are arranged in different sections to cover practical life skills, development of the senses, language development, literacy, mathematics, geography, history, and understanding of different cultures and creativity. They are carefully set out within easy reach of the children and are cleverly designed to aid the child’s learning, without the need for adult interference, although of course staff are always on hand to guide the children if needed. Some of the materials provide experience of life skills such as pouring, whilst also indirectly increasing the strength of the hand in preparation for holding a pencil. Others are developed to provide the children with a hands-on experience of learning gaining a step-by-step understanding of complex abstract concepts through the use of concrete examples, from the shape of letters to the structure of the decimal system.

The staff are much less dominant than their counterparts in other nurseries. ‘They are there to guide rather than control. They are not there to impart knowledge but to provide opportunities to learn and an environment in which this is most easily achieved. Learning is invited rather than imposed, encouraged rather than enforced.’ *

Equally, the emphasis is on giving children the opportunity to progress at their own speed, rather than driving towards rapid advance and early achievement. ‘Free from these pressures children tend to excel, driven by their own thirst for knowledge’*.

We have also added a more traditional computer area, a book corner, a messy play area and a role play corner.

*(Reach, An Introduction to the Montessori Movement across the UK, produced on behalf of Montessori Schools Association by the Montessori St Nicholas Charity – For copies Tel: 020 7584 9987 Email: centre@montessori.org.uk)