Early Learning

5 Facts About Montessori Schools

What is Montessori?

Montessori is the name of a very popular approach for teaching preschool and primary-age children. We'll explore the reasons for its popularity later. First, let's examine how Montessori got its start. As with many great movements, Montessori began with an idea and some theories by one of those remarkable visionaries who dot the pages of history.

Life and Work of Dr. Montessori

Dr. Maria Montessori (1870-1952) was born and raised in Italy.

• She came from a family of modest means.
• Her father did not approve of her desire to be educated, much less to become a doctor.
• Women didn't do such things back at the end of the 19th century.
• Despite the many obstacles that stood in her way, Maria earned her degree from the University of Rome in 1896.
• Her specialty was pediatric medicine.

While Dr. Montessori worked towards her degree, she studied and worked with mentally disabled children. She got her chance to put her experience, observations, and theories into practice when she was invited to open a school for the children of working-class families in 1907.

• The school was located in a low-income housing project in Rome.
• The first Casa dei Bambini was a traditional school with desks, chalkboards, and all the other accouterments of classrooms of the day.
• Dr. Montessori herself did not teach.
• She left that task to the building

Dr. Maria Montessori founded Casa de Bambini in a poor neighborhood of Rome, Italy, in 1906. She blazed new trails in early education by believing in the innate goodness of children, encouraging them to be curious and explore, and creating a teaching environment that followed the child.

Dr. Montessori's experiments and research ultimately produced a worldwide movement. Over 100 years later, her findings and research have stood the test of time and have been validated by modern analysis and investigation. Montessori schools have multiplied like rabbits in the United States from the 1960s onwards. Unlike Dr. Montessori's schools, which served poor children, most Montessori schools in North America educate children from the middle classes. Indeed, the Montessori approach has been used with children in all kinds of situations. It is very adaptable to the needs of a wide range of children.

Dr. Montessori never trademarked the name Montessori, nor did she claim any patents on her methodology. The result is that many Montessori schools out there claim to be the real thing. Some schools may include elements of Dr. Montessori's methods and philosophy in their teaching. Other schools quietly sublimate the parts of Dr. Montessori's thinking that may be inappropriate in their setting. In short, there are almost as many flavors of Montessori as there are schools. Not a bad thing in itself, but as always, do your due diligence. Caveat emptor!

Here are five things you should look for when vetting a school that

Froebel, Montessori and Steiner: Champions of Children

Friedrich Froebel, Maria Montessori, and Rudolf Steiner were trailblazers in early education in the 19th and early part of the 20th centuries.

• Their ideas and philosophies shaped early childhood education as we know it in the 21st century.
• Who were these people?
• Why did they feel that early education was so important?

Freidrich Froebel

Freidrich Froebel (1782-1852) invented "kindergarten," which means "a child's garden."

• Froebel wanted children to interact with their surroundings. Interacting with nature was central to his philosophy of education.
• He believed that interacting with nature would lead children to a closer examination of how things work.
• Froebel was influenced by the Swiss pedagogue Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827), whose methods and approach to education, in turn, shaped a young Albert Einstein when he attended the local school in Aarau.
• Today, few people, except educators or trivia buffs, know who Froebel is, even though his influence in early childhood education was profound.

One feature of Froebel's approach to teaching children was the use of gifts.

• He developed five gifts to be given to the child in ascending order.
• The gifts were designed to teach awareness of shapes, spatial relationships, and many other concepts to even the youngest child.

This video offers an overview of Froebel.

Dr. Maria Montessori

Italian physician and pedagogue Dr.

Disclaimer: My eldest daughter attended the Waldorf School of Garden City back in the 70s. We liked the gentle approach that allowed children to explore and learn to think critically. ~Rob Kennedy

Waldorf schools offer a well-thought-out approach to K-12 education. Unlike Montessori schools, which focus on the primary grades, Waldorf schools cover all the grades. The Waldorf movement got its start with the writings and philosophy of Rudolph Steiner (1861-1925). Pictured on the right, Steiner was an Austrian-born philosopher who founded a movement known as anthroposophy.

One of the key aims of our method of educating is to help the child toward developing the faculty of free imagination. So, for example, we generally tell stories without offering printed pictures. Our words provide the raw materials. The child has to “clothe” the story with his or her own images. (Mt Barker Waldorf School Parent Association 2001)

This video from the Spring Garden Waldorf Schools gives an overview of a Waldorf education.

The essence of the Waldorf approach to education is its emphasis on developing a child's imagination and creative side. The Waldorf pedagogues prefer that young children never be exposed to popular entertainment such as television, popular music, and computers. Competition is replaced with cooperation. Eurythmy, an expressive music cum dance art form, plays a central role in developing a child's artistic expression. The whole child is engaged

Montessori schools are popular worldwide with parents of children in the primary grades. Interestingly enough, the educational concepts pioneered and codified by Dr. Maria Montessori (1870-1952) decades ago to educate mentally disabled and ineducable children in the inner city have morphed into a kind of schooling generally available only to middle and upper-class families nowadays.

How do I know a school is a genuine Montessori school?

Caveat emptor! Not every school which claims to be a Montessori school adheres to the founder's standards and methods. That is because the name Montessori has never been protected by trademark or copyright law. As a result, you can have a Montessori school with any strength of Montessori-ness you can imagine. In truth, the genuine article is a school member of the American Montessori Society. The association will have officially sanctioned it. It will have certified Montessori teachers using Montessori methods and equipment. That is not to say that a school that claims to be a Montessori school but is not part of the national association is any less good or adequate. That, as always, depends on the quality of the teachers and teaching. Remember that Montessori has become a household name, much like 'Xerox,' which is synonymous with 'copying. '

What is so appealing to parents about the Montessori method?

What, then, is so appealing about Dr. Montessori's methods? At the heart of her philosophy is that children learn differently from adults and should be allowed to learn wherever and whatever