Maria Montessori was the first woman physician in Italy. An educator and humanitarian, she devoted her life to the study and observation of children. Her work was initially inspired by an interest in mentally deficient children. She developed a method of self education of young children within a planned environment using carefully designed materials and equipment. The results of her method led to the establishment of Montessori schools around the world. The movement came to the United States in 1915.

Basic to the Montessori philosophy is the concept that children are motivated from within by a natural curiosity and love of knowledge. The goal of early childhood education is to cultivate the child's own natural desire to learn. This is achieved within a prepared environment. Modern research has reinforced Dr. Montessori's observations that children pass through various sensitive periods of intense fascination for learning a particular activity or skill. The Montessori classroom encourages and invites the child during the.these sensitive stages with appropriate materials. Within a framework of order, the child develops according to his/her own will and readiness under the guidance of the teachers. Children acquiring basic skills in this natural way gain an early enthusiasm for learning as their inner personal dignity, independence, and self-discipline develop.

Everything in the Montessori environment is proportioned to the child's size. The equipment is readily accessible, moveable to permit flexible arrangement, and attractive. The children are aided in gaining independence and developing freedom to choose and work with materials and activities they can successfully complete. They may work alone or with others.

THE PROGRAM

A Montessori school, unlike the traditional nursery school, is not a play school. Dr. Montessori believed that "work was the great normalizer" and found that children need and enjoy work. It is through concentration on freely chosen work that a child fulfills his need to be worthwhile and begins his quest for self-actualization.

PRACTICAL LIFE
Practical Life activities make up the foundation of the program. They are intended to help the child adapt to his environment. He learns to button, snap, and tie, to shine shoes, sweep, dust, and polish. He also learns the forms of good manners in our culture, such as shaking hands, closing doors quietly, and not interrupting. The activities within the classroom are designed in a sequence of steps through which the child comes to realize order and logic in activity. Attention, concentration, carefulness, and independence originate with this work.

SENSORIAL
The Sensorial material is not intended to give new impressions but to order, relate, classify, explore, and realize the sense impressions the child has had before coming to school. The equipment is designed to aid the senses in discriminating form, shape, size, color, sound, and touch. Each piece of material isolates a single quality, a single sense impression. The Sensorial materials serve as keys to all other areas of learning. The sound exercises lead to music; the child's interest in sound, form, and texture is utilized in learning the shapes and sounds of the alphabet; form extends into geometry, botany, and geography.

LANGUAGE
Language is woven into all parts of the program. The child learns that words are made of sounds. Then he learns that each sound has a symbol. Knowing the sound and symbol for each letter of the alphabet, he begins to build words. Stories, poems, plays, and ordinary conversation are important in the environment. The aim is to increase the child's knowledge, his organization of thought, and his confidence and ability to express and use his mind.

MATHEMATICS
Montessori observed human tendencies to abstract, investigate, calculate, measure, imagine and create. If the child is allowed to develop these tendencies through manipulating concrete materials, allowing for repetition and concentration, he/she moves easily on to abstraction and a love for mathematics. As the child is introduced to numbers, both the symbol and quantity are taught. Later the decimal system (units, tens, hundreds, thousands) is brought to the child along with basic arithmetic processes.

CONCLUSION

The Montessori program develops the whole personality of the child - not merely his intellectual faculties but also his powers of initiative, deliberation, and independent choice. By living as a free member of a real, social community, the child is trained in the fundamental social qualities which form the basis of good citizenship.