Cedar Park Montessori School

About Montessori | Why Montessori | How the Montessori Method Is Unique

ABOUT MONTESSORI

Nominated three times for the Noble Peace Prize in 1949, 1950, and 1951, Dr. Maria Montessori was an education pioneer who established the Montessori Method. Born in Italy, she became the first woman doctor. Shortly afterward, her desire to help children was so strong that she gave up her medical practice to work with children of working parents. There, she established what is now known as the Montessori Method and the first children’s house (Casa de Bambini).

Dr. Maria Montessori, through her observation, realized that children learn to absorb their environment effortlessly. It was through these observation, that every material and equipment was designed so that children could do work without much assistance from the adult. Throughout the years, many who studied under her went on to make their own contributions to education and child psychology, including Anna Freud, Jean Piaget, Alfred Adler, and Erik Erikson.

She is credited with the development of the open classroom, individualized education, manipulative learning materials, teaching toys, child-size tables and chairs and programmed instruction. In the last 35 years, educators in Europe and North America have begun to recognize the consistency between the Montessori approach with what we have learned from research into child development.

Throughout her career as an educator, Dr. Maria Montessori visited many countries, including her first visit to the United States in 1913. It was at this time the Montessori Educational Association was founded in Washington, DC by Alexander Graham Bell and his wife Mabel. She had staunch supporters such as Thomas Edison and Helen Keller. In the years ahead, she traveled throughout Europe and Asia giving lectures and establishing Teacher Training Institutions. Dr. Montessori died in Noordwijk, Holland in 1952; yet her work lives on through dedicated schools and the Montessori Organization.

WHY MONTESSORI?

Montessori offers a rigorous and innovative academic program. The curriculum is organized into overlapping subjects, rather than individualized subjects that children merely memorize and covered by the teacher only once at a specific grade level.

The Montessori Curriculum should be introduced in the early years of a child’s life, at least starting at three years of age and continued into later years. The lessons are introduced in a stages starting from simple and concrete. The lessons are repeated and reintroduced with added challenges throughout the consequent years with a degree of abstraction and complexity. By introducing the lessons in a simple and concrete manner, it helps the child to complete the lessons and feel as if though he/she has succeeded. Then challenges are added on without the child being aware of the complexity of the lesson. Thus, instilling independence, self confidence and self esteem in the child about his/her work.

HOW THE MONTESSORI METHOD IS UNIQUE WHEN COMPARED TO OTHER PRE-SCHOOLS

In most pre-schools a teacher teaches the children educational concepts in a group. In the Montessori school the children learn concepts spontaneously as they work independently with the many materials in the environment. The materials in the Montessori classroom progress from simple to more complex design and usage, each level of understanding being worked through repetition to reach the next level of understanding. The child has an ability to manipulate the materials. The child learns by arranging materials in a specific way, which explains the function of a concept. The movement and the work are inseparable: With his/her thinking, the materials begin as concrete expressions of a concept and gradually become more abstract expressions of that concept. The materials are designed for self-education and self-correction.