Welcome to day three of my 5 day Montessori Series. I'm excited that so many of you have dropped by to learn more about how to incorporate the Montessori Method in your home learning! I love sharing about Montessori and I'm thankful that you are finding it helpful! So far, we have discussed What the Montessori Method is, and How To Create a Prepared Environment. Today, I'll be telling you a bit about the Montessori Materials.
The Montessori Materials are certainly the most distinct portion of the Montessori Method. They are the curriculum of Montessori. I am not aware of any other learning method that is based on materials. Often, learning methods have a book and use manipulative's to help enforce concepts taught in the book. In the Montessori Method, it is just the opposite, there are no textbooks. Any paper products are used to help show mastery of a concept learned with the materials.
Montessori classrooms are not filled with just any old item that looks fun or educational. They were carefully crafted and selected by Dr. Montessori. In her first Children's Home, Dr. Montessori worked with very poor children in a housing complex in Rome. When the school opened, many of the wealthy women treated the school as a charity and donated many beautiful toys to the nursery. There wasn't a lack of toys for these children to play with.
Dr. Montessori began to test out her materials by placing them on the shelf with the other toys. She found that the children began choosing her materials instead of the traditional toys. If a toy was not played with for a time, she removed it from the shelf completely. My understanding is that she did this with her materials as well, and that there are some of her creations that we have never seen because the children were not attracted to them :).
Montessori Materials are very beautiful objects. They draw a child in and captivate them so they will stay and work on the material. They are generally made of wood and are very durable, lasting through many children.
The materials are each designed to teach a specific concept. The concepts build from one material to the next, with each material teaching both it's own individual concept, and acting as a stepping stone to the next one. It is important to introduce them in a specified order so that a child has mastered the skills necessary to complete the materials.
Now, I suspect you see these photos and think. Well, those are lovely, they really are! I am sure my children would like them. But, come now-they are BLOCKS! My children need to learn their letters and numbers, we have plenty of blocks.
If you haven't read my blog before, let me introduce you to my daughter, Explorer. She is 7 1/2 months old. In the last 7 months, she has learned how to hold her head up, roll over, sit up, scoot, pick things up, put them in her mouth, respond to her name and babble a little bit. Of all the things I just listed, only 2 of them are language related. As humans, the first things we do are motor. We learn to roll, crawl, stand, balance, walk, and run before we can say much of anything.
As I said above, the Montessori Materials build on concepts already learned. When a 2 1/2 or 3 year old enters the Montessori classroom they are very capable with their motor skills, but their language is still very much developing. They can use their hands, balance blocks, and build a tower, but many of them can not hold a lengthy conversation about height and length. They will have a difficult time saying orange, for example, but can quickly match two orange tiles. Dr. Montessori understood this about a child and chose materials that encouraged a child to use and master the abilities they already had before moving to things they did not yet grasp.
Another reason Montessori doesn't start with ABC and 123, is that the purpose behind letters, numbers, and language are to label things. When a child observes two things of different sizes, she can see-concretely-which is bigger and which is smaller. She can see which is taller and which is shorter. The words 'tall' 'short' 'big' 'small' are just that-WORDS. Words to describe something. Words that are chosen to mean what our language says they mean. We could have chosen the word RAINBOW to mean tall and the word CRAYON to mean short. When looking at the two items, the words would not change that one is taller then the other.
The Montessori Materials work from concrete to abstract. They show a child how something works and how it relates to other things. Then, the words are introduced so that the child can explain what they know to someone else.
So, enough about the whys. I want to show you some of the materials. Because, a picture is worth 1000 words :). There are MANY different materials, each of which are really neat. Here are a few of my favorites.
The very first materials presented in a Montessori Classroom are the Knobbed Cylinders. The only two skills needed to do this work are 1) The ability to use the pincher/grasper fingers, and 2) Enough strength to lift the cylinders. The blocks themselves are quite heavy, but if a child is unable to carry them mom or teacher can help.
There are 10 wooden cylinders in each block.
They increase in diameter from 1 centimeter to 5 1/2 centimeters. This is the first of four blocks. The child treats this as a puzzle, finding the correct home for each of the cylinders.
Once the first block is mastered, they are able to add block two. This block looks exactly the same on the top,
but they are different heights.
All the cylinders are placed in the middle to be placed in the two blocks.
Mini Cooper is 2 1/2 and able to complete this work. You would continue to introduce all the blocks until all 4 are being used at once. There is a wonderful description, with photos, on infomontessori.com
1 comment:
Great photos!
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