Every Child is Potentially the Light of the World

Dr. Maria Montessori wrote in Educating Human Potential, “make the child a world citizen at the beginning of his conscious life to carry mankind forward”. Montessori education has been progressing for over 100 years. It is increasingly found in public schools and has spread around the world, indicating that the method provides children with the opportunities to develop their potential, particularly at the precious foundation.

The Montessori curriculum addresses five main areas of early years development: practical life, sensorial perception, early mathematics and language as well as cultural beginnings including geography, history, science and an appreciation of multicultural diversity. Music, art, craft and drama experiences are provided along with a wide variety of specially-designed learning materials for children to play with a purpose. “The purpose of life is to live a life of purpose” (Virtues Educators Guide) begins with purposeful play.

The Montessori teaching procedures inherently provide children with positive social and emotional development experiences. For example, Montessori taught that “a child is disciplined when he is master of himself”. Therefore the child is encouraged to be as independent and self-controlled as possible by providing a safe learning environment full of activities that he/she learns to do for themselves. There is only one of each activity so the children learn to respect other children and the environment by returning each activity to its place on a shelf so as to take turns with the materials. The children also often work together on a choice of activity, helping each other. They learn to use their words to share or take turns and encourage each other. The Virtues programme is key to positive language at Cobble Hill Montessori where 4 year olds can be heard saying, “you need to practice your responsibility and put your things away” or 3 year olds with, “I practiced my courage and did it myself”, their faces glowing with self-esteem and confidence.

Practical life materials give children the opportunity to practice self-control in pouring, transferring, matching, sorting, polishing, preparing their own snack and cleaning it up. These activities build the childrens confidence and enthusiasm. Sensorial perception materials help children to refine their discrimination of varying sounds, smells, textures, tastes, and visual colours, shapes, sizes. All materials are hands-on as children learn first through concrete means and this gives the foundation for later abstract thinking. Thus mathematics materials provide the children with clear connections between the quantity of things and its symbol. Language is taught with three step lessons. For example, the teacher says of a sand paper letter, ‘this is “u”. The child feels it, hears it, sees it, even shapes their bodies into a ‘u’ shape. Then the teacher says of another sandpaper letter, “this is ‘p’. The second step is the teacher then asks the child to point to “u” or “p” and mixes up the order of the sandpaper letters several times until she is sure the child knows which is “u’ and which is “p”. Only if the teacher is sure the child can answer correctly does the teacher proceed to step 3, asking the child, “what is this?” As the child says each sound, the teacher brings the letters together visually and slowly in front of the child until the child is reading “up”. This is only one example of the use of many purposeful play materials. Cobble Hill Montessori also has an amazing range of books, including the Oxford Reading Tree scheme, a set of funny, relateable and family-theme readers.

Children today are increasingly aware of the fact that we are one diverse human family living on one planet. They know there is no air or water or food in outer space. They need to know that our beautiful planet is renewable, provided we care for it. Therefore, our science programme is based on play with Nature and natural materials. We learn about living and non-living things, we grow gardens, we care for pets and learn about life cycles, we have field trips to learn more about our community and the people who do their part to keep our planet home renewing. We do a lot of creative activities in art, craft and discovery science such as finding out that air has pressure and takes up space. When children are confident to invent and create, they can feel confident about helping renewal.

Love and respect are the foundation of Montessori education. Children are not herded or manipulated, they are lovingly nurtured to realize their innate goodness and to create their selves – self-control, self-discipline, caring, compassion, courtesy, kindness, truthfulness, joy, respect for themselves, others and their environment, to begin discovering their interests in life. Montessori felt that young children are spiritual embryos - learning to shine in the world, Love is renewed in children and so Hope for people to live in Peace.