The basic idea of the Montessori approach to education is that every child carries unseen within him the person he will become.  This spiritual, intellectual, and physical power is to be protected and nurtured while allowed to develop at its own pace.  Each child deserves the freedom to proceed at an individual, natural rate of development.  Each child needs to become responsible for decisions and to learn how to make choices.  Choices are made on a basis of self-discipline and this is achieved through logical experiences of work and play.

Young children need movement as much as they need food.  The two streams of energy, the psychomotor powers of the child, are mental and physical.  In a Montessori setting the need to walk, run, speak, sing, read, write, and compute are expressed through the use of the Montessori Materials designed for multisensory and physical exploration, and are self-correcting.  This puts the control in the hands of the child who comes to feel, "I can do it myself."

The adult does not disturb the child when concentration is in process.  The adult does not abandon the child and does assist when help is needed. 

The American Montessori Society Teacher has extensive education which results in directing the child who is assured that risk-taking is OK and therefore the child becomes self-directing, independent, and creative.

The philosophy is that the only valid impulse to learning is the self-motivation of the child.  Children learn the Montessori way because the teacher prepares the environment with which the child interacts, presents experiences at the proper time of the period of interest and action, and, therefore, the child absorbs the benefits of the experience.  This further motivates the urge to move and learn and fosters the courage to pursue curiosity and intellectual development.

The Infant and Toddler Children's House activities for children through two years of age include toilet training and the environment is especially designed to meet these developmental needs.  The Children's House for Multi-Aged Groups, usually from 3 to 6 years of age, also allows children to progress at their own learning pace.  Children choose work which reinforces learning skills and which reinforces feelings of success.  They teach each other and help each other.  Patience and courtesy are developed through a sense of respect for each other.

The Directress is the dynamic link between the child and the materials.  The Montessori Materials are logically sequenced in a hierarchy of the pattern of mental development.  Each time a material is presented to a child, a new concept is experienced.  This is a step-by-step process which motivates the thirst for knowledge and challenges the hand to be directed by the brain in making decisions as the child manipulates the materials.

Freedom of choice of materials develops interest, concentration, inner-discipline, and initiative.  Children learn to finish what they start.  This is called "the cycle of activity."  This attitude toward education develops the joy of learning, finding out the answers, and learning through discovery. The materials give the power to the child to spot the errors and to self-correct;  to participate in the learning process beginning with sensory awareness and proceeding to pre-reading and math skills.

The Montessori Environment is an expression of life.  Ideally, it should include people, art, music, food, plants, and representatives of the animal kingdom.  Children acquire a methodology for life-long learning in this carefully planned, stimulating, structured, and inviting environment.  The furniture is child-sized;  low shelves make all learning and art materials easily accessible to the children in the following groupings:

I.  Practical Life:
The Development of Motor Skills

II.  Sensorial Materials:
The Sensorial Foundation of the Intellect

III.  Educational Materials:
The Development of Language, Early Preparation of the Mathematical Mind, Cultural Subjects

1. Elementary Gross Motor Skills: Activities in holding, carrying, putting down and picking up, walking, sitting, getting up, moving furniture and objects from one place to another, group games of silence, walking, and balancing the body.
   
   
2. Caring for an Indoor Environment: Indoor activities include dusting, cleaning, washing, polishing, arranging flowers, maintaining the aquarium, terrarium, bird cages, and feeding animals.
   
   
3. Caring for an Outdoor Environment: Sweeping the sidewalk, washing and scrubbing windows, raking, digging, hosing, watering plants, weeding the garden, gathering leaves and flowers, protecting the young, and feeding the animals.
   
   
4. Care of Self-Hygiene: Washing and drying hands, cleaning teeth, combing hair, cleaning nails, blowing one's nose, clothes-folding, removing spots, washing and drying, ironing, polishing or cleaning shoes, learning how to button, zip, tie, buckle, and hang up clothes as an aid to dressing and undressing.
   
   
5. Social Relations: How to knock at doors, how to watch others working without speaking or touching their work, lessons in grace and courtesy, table manners, how to leave a meal, and how to use and leave a bathroom.
   
   
6. Social Relations Outdoors: Rules of traffic safety and how to behave in public.  The environment shows the child what needs to be done;  his center (his will, his intelligence) drives him to act on the environment and practice perfecting his movements until they become efficient and natural.

A complete set of materials is carefully crafted in Italy, Holland, and the United States.  They are measured within the centimeter for the development of:

• Visual Perception: Sight
• Tactile Senses: Muscular Memory, Sense of Touch
• Baric Sense: Weight
• Thermic Sense: Temperature
• Auditory Perception: Sounds
• Olfactory Sense: Smells
• Gustatory Sense: Taste

III.  Educational Apparatus
The development of language is based on receptive and expressive experiences.  A child can read before writing or write before reading according to his style.  Individual progress and group activities are based on phonics, linguistics, and sight-reading skills matched to the learning style of the child.  Creative writing begins when children draw pictures, tell stories, and then write stories with illustrations.  

Early Preparation of the Mathematical Mind
The use of the sensorial materials forms the subconscious foundation for the mathematical concepts further developed by the use of objects matched to abstract numerals.  Conscious observations of the relationships of object to quantity begin to unfold as the materials of the decimal system, geometry, and pre-algebra are used by the child.

Cultural Subjects of natural interest to the child are:

All the concepts of land and water, plants and animals, music and art are basic to the respect for nature developed by the child.  The desire to learn more about the world and what is in it leads to a desire to read and then to share ideas through the written word by recording thoughts.

Computer programs assist the child in organization of thoughts and in communicating ideas creatively.

Parents can help children by listening to their questions and ideas, teaching them to learn through questioning;  teaching them to listen using "Simon Says,"  to think using the "I Spy Games,"  teaching them to follow directions by playing "Mother May I?"  and by consistently reading stories aloud and discussing them.  By taking them along on short and long errands of journeys, children learn about the community.  Words, words, words: "Can you find the words to tell me how you feel?"  is the question asked by Dr.  Joyce McGhee in the Children's House.  It is OK to be sad or glad, to hurt, to need TLC, to be angry, and learn to use words instead of body language.  All of this needs to be learned through encouraging experiences with understanding adults.