Why Montessori
Learning the right answers will get you through school,
Learning how to learn will get you through life!
Montessori teaches students to think; not simply to memorize, feedback, and forget!!
The whole child approach is the primary goal of a Montessori program. This is to help each child reach his or her full potential in all areas of life. Indoor and outdoor activities promote the development of special skills, emotional growth, and physical coordination, as well as cognitive preparation.
Children love to be involved in self-directed, purposeful activities. When provided a prepared environment of meaningful hands-on materials, along with the time to complete the process of the lesson at his or her own pace, a child will choose to engage in activities that will create learning in personal and powerful ways.
The Montessori system recognizes that the students need to develop a strong sense of independence, self-confidence, and self-discipline. They must be willing to make and learn from countless mistakes;
This suggests an education of the heart, as much as an education of the mind.
Many adults remember sitting in their desks at school, staring at the clock and counting the minutes until school was out, hoping the teacher wouldn’t call on them, and studying only the things they feared would be on the test. We tend to accept this experience as universal and inevitable, and yet the experience of boredom and frustration is utterly foreign to the Montessori student.
Traditional education, in its current form, has been passed on to us from its formation in the industrial age – and this is why the mentality of the assembly line still permeates most educational environments.
Montessori education, in contrast, sees the child not as an empty bucket waiting to be filled with knowledge, but as a unique human being in the process of self-formation, one who often has quite accurate instincts about what it is that he or she needs to do next in order to grow and to learn.
Montessori students experience a daily joy in learning that they never outgrow. They undertake ambitious studies of their own initiative, show immense pride at the completion of a new task or project, and ask eagerly to be quizzed on what they have learned. This love of learning follows them throughout life, and leads them to educational paths and careers about which they feel truly passionate.
Beyond the high academic standards for which Montessori is known, there is a focus in the classroom on the less quantifiable qualities of mind and spirit that traditional education has forgotten: responsibility, courtesy, peace, self-reflection, and kindness. Maria Montessori saw her educational method as a model for peace in society; and the skills of cooperation, leadership and self-control that students develop in a Montessori environment are the ones that lead to a happy and fulfilling life.
Why Does the Montessori Method Work?
The Montessori Method works because it is based on observing the activities of each child within a well-defined learning environment. Within the Montessori environment, children engage in activities of their choice during the work cycle. A trained adult observes and assists as appropriate. It is the child’s self-directed and purposeful activity that leads to greater independence, concentration, and rapid personal growth.
Success in a Montessori program is determined by the understanding and implementation of the following principles:
Four Planes of Development
Birth to Six
(The “Absorbent Mind" - the Unconscious Learner)
Six to Twelve
(The "Reasoning Mind" - the Conscious Learner)
Twelve to Eighteen
(Adolescence - the Social Learner)
Eighteen to Twenty Four
(Maturity - the Social Contributor)