Dr. Montessori's Handbook

I started rereading this book recently and found that I was unable to put it down for many reasons.
With both my AMI and AMS background and observation in many classrooms, I've developed my own reasons for what I believe works well and why and what doesn't. This book was authentically going back to what Maria did in many individual instances and fit with my own observations.

In my own mind, the necessity between a child needing a "lesson" before the ability to use a material has been answered. At least for practical life and sensorial - the exact conclusion that I initially reached although that has practical difficulties for classroom management.

"These lessons are not necessary for all the children, as they learn from one another, and of their own accord come with great patience to analyze the movements, performing them separately very slowly and carefully." (Montessori, 1965, p. 54)
and
"Such intervention, however, is almost always found to be unnecessary, for the children see their companions at work, and thus are encouraged to imitate them" (Montessori, 1965, p. 69)

Very important. I've often felt that even the youngest children need access to all of practical life and most of sensorial very early. Observation is the key to when they need a small or complete lesson.

She introduces the knobbed cylinders prior to the pink tower, and brown prisms. Her reasoning is very interesting here. "As a matter of fact, it is more difficult, as there is no control of the error in the material itself. It is the child's eye alone which can furnish the control." (Montessori, 1965, p. 76) A good point, but the materials them-self can be used to demonstrate when they are correctly placed. The pink tower when not built from largest to smallest is more unstable, and when very accurate the smallest cube will go around the edge of all others... (I have yet to see a child interested in building to that accuracy though!)

In many books, Maria Montessori is very clear about the need to treat the materials with care and without undue roughness. However, she is very clear that part of what will attract the child to building with the pink cubes is the ability to knock them over. "As soon as he has built the tower, the child, with a blow of his hand, knocks it down, so that the cubes are scattered on the carpet, and then he builds it up again." (Montessori, 1965, p. 72) WOW! Yet, I can see the attraction, and desire of this with young children. I've also watched young children build the tower incorrectly not aware of their errors, but friends rather insistently wanting to correct them.

My assessment skills and mathematical knowledge play a lot into what is going on when children are unable to correctly order any of the sensorial materials. It gives me a good insight into what they need practice in. I have also watched many teachers intervene to help the child. This is the best quote that I've read this morning, and in so many ways sums up Montessori.

"As the aim of the exercise, however is not that the rods be arranged in the right order of gradation, but that the child should practice by himself, there is no need to intervene." (Montessori, 1965, p. 76)

(The beginning of that quote is "The reason is that the mistakes which the child makes, by placing, for example, a small cube beneath one that is larger, are caused by his own lack of education, and it is the repetition of the exercise which, by refining his powers of observation, will lead him sooner or later to correct himself. Sometimes it happens that a child working with the long rods makes the most glaring mistakes." (Montessori, 1965, p. 76) )