The following is the text from this section of the 2009-2010 edition of Child of the World, Montessori from Three to Six Years
To see other sections of this publication return to: http://www.michaelolaf.com/CWcontents.html
THE SENSES
The young child is vividly aware of the world, taking in
impressions through all of her senses. It is also the time of life when
lifelong preferences are formed. If we want to lay the groundwork for
the child's later ability to create an organized, peaceful and calm, but
interesting, challenging, life-supporting, and beautiful environment,
we must provide just such an environment now.
This is the reason we take special care in providing toys made of a variety
of lovely, natural materials for the young child—interesting toys
rich in variety of weight, color, texture, and purpose, of the best quality
available. We make sure these toys engage the child's intelligence as
well as his body.
COOPERATIVE GAMES
Cooperative games teach children to work together, to help
each other, to consider the good of the other person or the group as well
as oneself, instead of fostering competition and winning. Competitive
play cause players to feel isolated or left out. The action is secretive
and can result in feelings or arguments.
In environments where children work and play independently and cooperatively,
they learn the most valuable kind of socialization—helping each other.
In the home, or in the classroom, cooperative games helps to lay this
groundwork. In cooperative games, children and adults feel good about
themselves because they enjoy sharing, helping each other, and making
joint decisions.
In short, the challenge shifts from defeating to helping each other.
After a group of children or a family learns to play cooperative games,
it becomes easy to change the rules of any other game to make it less
competitive. We consider this true socialization and preparation for positive
interaction throughout life.
ACTIVE PLAY
We have to understand that the
world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is
more important than the eye. It is the hand that drives the subsequent
evolution of the brain. I have described the hand when it uses a tool
as an instrument of discovery. We see that every time a child learns—to
lace his shoes, to thread a needle, to fly a kite or to play a penny whistle.
With the practical action there goes another, namely finding pleasure
in action for its own sake—in the skill that one perfects by being
pleased with it. This at the bottom is responsible for every work of art,
and science too: our poetic delight in what human beings do because they
can do it. The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.
—Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man
MOVEMENT
It
takes work on the part of the adult to withstand the temptation to let
the child spend hours in front of the television or the computer, but
it is well worth the effort to support the natural development of the
child. Television accustoms the child to be a passive receiver of information
rather than an active questioner or researcher. And the intelligence of
computers does not hold a candle to the kind of creativity inborn in the
human being. The child needs large muscle movement and gradually more
and more refined large and small muscles—legs, trunk, arms, hands,
to the pincer movement of thumb and fingers.
SENSORIAL MATERIALS,
TOYS
There are special toys or sensorial
puzzles in the 3-6 class, such as the pink tower, the color tablets, and
the sound boxes, that illustrate concepts such as large and small, hot
and cold, loud and soft and so on. These materials have a specific way
to be used because it is in this way that the child develops an understanding
of the concept each is designed to teach. They can be thought of as puzzle
toys because of the specific way to use them or to put them together.
This work, and the understanding of the concepts, lead to an incredible
level of creativity of the child in the home and school. It is rather
like an artist who learns to use the canvas, the brushes, and the paints
in very specific ways, and then creates remarkable individual pictures
as a result is the basic work.
These sensorial materials are not necessary in the home, where parents
can find other ways of introducing these experiences in the daily life
of children—feeling the temperature of the bath water, exploring
tastes while baking, and color or size with toys, etc.
Along with these puzzle toys are those with open-ended use, but even these
will have basic skills to learn before the creativity stage begins. For
example a child learns how to hold a nail and use a hammer safely before
she makes pictures with the hammer board. Learning how to carry blocks
and put them away is an important part of block play. When picking out
toys it is helpful to imagine how long a child can play with them. If
a child is included in the regular food preparation in the family and
the real table setting and dish washing, he is not going to be interested
in pretending to do these things with toys. If children are raised without
early exposure to television and computers, they get used to the wonderful
feeling of physical movement and work, and of reading and interacting
with people, and have much less patience for passive entertainment.
The most important element in selecting toys and creating an environment
for children is to include materials which will engage the child's mental
faculties along with movement of the body and work of the hands, activities
during which the child will enjoy the experience of focusing and concentrating,
and find joy in the activity. |