San Juan Montessori

About Montessori

The Prepared Environment 
The Prepared Environment is a crucial part of the child's education in the classroom. When the child enters the Montessori nursery school, she/he will enter an environment that is carefully prepared and caters to his/her needs. The prepared environment allows the child to develop without constant assistance and supervision from an adult. All the furniture and work materials are child-sized, giving the child full freedom to move-about and explore. This also allows the child to be more active and the Directress/Teacher more passive. The environment does not contain any objects that the child may not use or that hinders his development, nor it contains any materials that are broken or incomplete. The work-material is kept out on the shelves and may be used by the child whenever he/she desires. Because the materials are always stored in the same place, the child can always locate them. It is part of the child's work-cycle to return used material to its designated place in the classroom, so that others may use it. As part of the Practical Life activities, the children learn to keep their environment in order and generally clean and tidy. This also fulfills the child's innate Sensitive Period for Order. One of the main duties of the Montessori teacher is to keep the prepared environment in perfect, orderly condition. 

The Montessori Materials 
The Montessori Material was developed and compiled by Maria Montessori herself. After many years of careful study and observation of the children in her schools, she put together materials that fully stimulate the child's inner desire to learn and become more independent from the adults around him.
Montessori studied the educational materials used by Jean Itard and Edouard Seguin. These materials stimulate the child's five senses: tactical, visual, olfactory, auditory and gustatory. Montessori incorporated their ideas into her own apparatus and designed other material in addition. Montessori's curriculum consists of Practical Life; Sensorial; Mathematics;Language and Culture. Materials have been designed for each of these areas. Each of the material has direct-and indirect aims and prepares the child for later skills in life. For example, learning to build the Pink Tower, ten pink blocs of decreasing size, in Sensorial not only teaches the child how to build a tower but also prepares for later reading and writing skills by developing the child's fine motor skills such as the pincer-grasp. These preparations may be physical or psychological, such as: developing the child's gross and fine motor skills, hand eye coordination, independence and concentration, but also self-esteem, social skills and the intellect. The Montessori material is designed in simple fashion, leaving out any unnecessary and obstructing aspects such as colors or their aesthetic parts. Each activity therefore, identifies a single, particular quality such as taste or color, for the child to focus on. The material also contains a built-in Control-of-Error. This control-of-error may be visual, such as: The Knobbed Cylinders which fit perfectly in their designated hole, if the cylinder is placed incorrectly, the child can see it and the exercise cannot be finished until it is corrected. The child is able to see the final result whether the activity is done correctly or not. This leaves the child free from the teacher's correction and supervision, developing the child's independence and inner desire to practice and improve the exercise.

Normalization
Dr. Montessori observed that the children achieved an integration of self through their work. First, the child’s cycle of repetition, concentration, and satisfaction would begin. This cycle would lead to a development of inner discipline, self-assurance, and preference for purposeful activity. Dr. Montessori called this process of psychic integration "normalization." It appeared to be the "normal state of the child." Normalization occurs through the child’s concentration and application to his or her work. An interesting activity, freely chosen, which has the virtue of inducing concentration, adds to the child’s energies and mental capacities and leads the child to self-mastery. The essential element is for the task to arouse such an interest that it engages the child’s entire personality.

Characteristics of the "normalized child" include:

• Ability to concentrate well
• Sense of personal dignity
• Independence
• Self-motivation
• Love of order
• Enjoyment of repetition
• Ability to work alone
• Self-discipline
• Desire for freedom of choice
• Pleasure and fulfilment in work for its own sake; no need for rewards or punishment
• Obedience
• Preference for work over play
• Love of learning