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A Haven for Children

© Lucy Appadoo

As a current student of a Montessori teaching diploma (by correspondence), I have gained many new perspectives on child development and education. These new ways of seeing 'teaching' as well as the 'psychology' of children, have allowed me to practice appropriate methods in nurturing and guiding my own daughter, and have instilled in me, a desire to work with children in the future.

Overall, children do not need to be formally taught until they're at least 4 or 5 years of age, which is school-age. However, prior to that time, children need the right conditions in their environment to follow a natural course of development. For example, adults need to provide a range of stimulating activities that enhance physical, emotional and mental growth. It's important to instil a sense of independence and challenge in children, to allow them to engage in tasks of interest to them, rather than what the adults wish for them to do.

According to Dr. Montessori, children attain a level of intellectual readiness by the time they are 6 years of age. This means that before this time, children learn naturally from their environment, so do not need formal teaching from adults. Children can be left to their own devices where adults can facilitate learning and get them to think for themselves in correcting tasks. Children have absorbent minds up until the age of 7 so require 'order', a safe environment, and engaging activities that cater to this sensitive period of development.

It's amazing how absorbent childrens' minds are in language. The environment (or people around them) holds the key to language learning. For example, by simply hearing it from adults, children follow a natural course of development by first cooing and babbling, then uttering their first intentional word by the age of one. At 2 years of age, all language stored in their subconscious suddenly spurts out. Montessori called it the 'explosion into speech.'. By 3 years of age, children are quite fluent in their native tongue, able to string grammatically correct sentences. They can do this without being formally taught syntax. By 4 or 5 years of age, Montessori believed they were ready to use letters of the alphabet (made of sandpaper for tactile sense) whereby children would hear the pronunciation of the letter (by the teacher or adult), would repeat the sound they heard, and would simultaneously trace the letter with the finger. This form of teaching creates a connection between auditory, visual and motor skills, in that children start building sounds in readiness for word building.

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