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com/maria-montessoriQuotes by Maria Montessori The environment must be rich in motives which lend interest to activity and invite the child to conduct his own experiences. *** The things he sees are not just remembered; they form a part of his soul. *** Children are human beings to whom respect is due, superior to us by reason of their innocence and of the greater possibilities of their future. *** It is the child who makes the man, and no man exists who was not made by the child he once was. *** When dealing with children there is greater need for observing than of probing *** It is true that we cannot make a genius. We can only give to teach child the chance to fulfil his potential possibilities. *** Little children, from the moment they are weaned, are making their way toward independence. *** Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed. *** The child is both a hope and a promise for mankind. *** Education is a natural process carried out by the child and is not acquired by listening to words but by experiences in the environment. *** The first essential for the childs development is concentration. The child who concentrates is immensely happy. *** Respect all the reasonable forms of activity in which the child engages and try to understand them. *** Plainly, the environment must be a living one, directed by a higher intelligence, arranged by an adult who is prepared for his mission. More Maria Montessori Quotes *** The child becomes a person through work. *** To aid life, leaving it free, however, to unfold itself, that is the basic task of the educator. *** The land is where our roots are. The children must be taught to feel and live in harmony with the Earth. *** The child, in fact, once he feels sure of himself, will no longer seek the approval of authority after every step. ***

To give a child liberty is not to abandon him to himself. *** The environment itself will teach the child, if every error he makes is manifest to him, without the intervention of a parent of teacher, who should remain a quiet observer of all that happens. *** To let the child do as he likes when he has not yet developed any powers of control is to betray the idea of freedom. *** But an adult if he is to provide proper guidance, must always be calm and act slowly so that the child who is watching him can clearly see his actions in all their particulars. *** The essence of independence is to be able to do something for ones self. *** The child can develop fully by means of experience in his environment. We call such experiences work. *** Such experiences is not just play. It is work he must do in order to grow up. *** We found individual activity is the one factor that stimulates and produces development. *** Of all things love is the most potent. More Maria Montessori Quotes *** The hands are the instruments of mans intelligence. *** The human hand allows the minds to reveal itself. *** To assist a child we must provide him with an environment which will enable him to develop freely. *** The childs progress does not depend only on his age, but also on being free to look around him. *** Free choice is one of the highest of all the mental processes. *** Since it is through movement that the will realises itself, we should assist a child in his attempts to put his will into act. *** Imitation is the first instinct of the awakening mind. *** These words reveal the childs inner needs; Help me to do it alone. *** No adult can bear a childs burden or grow up in his stead. *** Only through freedom and environmental experience is it practically possible for human development to occur.

*** The child builds his inmost self out of the deeply held impressions he receives. *** Growth is not merely a harmonious increase in size, but a transformation. *** The greatness of the human personality begins at the hour of birth. *** The prize and punishments are incentives toward unnatural or forced effort, and, therefore we certainly cannot speak of the natural development of the child in connection with them. *** Character formation cannot be taught. It comes from experience and not from explanation. *** Growth comes from activity, not from intellectual understanding. *** He who is served is limited in his independence. *** The essential thing is to arouse such an interest that it engages the childs whole personality. *** Education is a natural process carried out by the human individual, and is acquired not by listening to words, but by experiences in the environment. *** Education should no longer be mostly imparting knowledge, but must take a new path, seeking the release of human potentials. *** All our handling of the child will bear fruit, not only at the moment, but in the adult they are destined to become. *** The child is an enigma He has the highest potentialities, but we do not know what he will be. *** The activity of the child has always been looked upon as an expression of his vitality. *** The study of love and its utilization will lead us to the source from which it springs, The Child. *** It is not in human nature for all men to tread the same path of development, as animals do of a single species. *** Watching a child makes it obvious that the development of his mind comes through his movements. *** The childs parents are not his makers but his guardians. *** We must therefore turn to the child as to the key to the fate of our future life. ***

The unknown energy that can help humanity is that which lies hidden in the child. *** The child should live in an environment of beauty. *** It is in the encounter of the maternal guiding instincts with the sensitive periods of the newly born that conscious love develops between parent and child. DAWN.COM/ARCHIVES Directly independence has been reached, the adult who keeps on helping becomes an obstacle. The core of human solidarity is the realisation of the importance of human personality. The child, who was born normally, goes towards independence. One who avoids this is degenerating. It is not right to say that mother and father have made their child. Rather we should say, `The child is the father of man`. if a child has not been able to act according to the directives of his sensitive period, the opportunity of a natural conquest is lost, and is lost for good. Slight errors at the beginning can cause the greatest deviations in later life. A man can grow and reach maturity within a spiritual environment that is really not his own. The child seeks for independence by means of work; and independence of body and mind. Little he cares about the knowledge of others; he wants to acquire knowledge of his own to have experience of his own and to perceive it by his own unaided efforts. We are so engrossed with the progress of our environment and of the ideas embodied in it, that we have not yet turned our attention towards ourselves towards life. He who is served or being helped. has injury done to his independence. The most important period of life is not the age of university studies but the period from birth to the age of six for that is the time when intelligence itself, her greatest implement, is being formed Maria Montessori

http://www.sweetwatermontessori.com/Quotes.htm " The real preparation for education is the study of one's self. The training of the teacher is something far more than the learning of ideas. It includes the training of character; it is a preparation of the spirit. " " Follow the child, but follow the child as his leader. " " Help me do it alone " " Do not tell them how to do it. Show them how to do it and do not say a word. If you tell them, they will watch your lips move. If you show them, they will want to do it themselves. " " The education of even a small child, therefore, does not aim at preparing him for school, but for life. " " A child who has become master of his acts through long, pleasant and interesting activities in which he has engaged, is a child filled with health and joy and remarkable for his calmness and discipline. " " A man is not what he is because of the teachers he has had, but because of what he has done. " " The child who seeks to be heard and is wounded by rejection often withdraws in a far more dangerous fashion than mere submission. " " The child whom we have robbed of his own will becomes difficult; we believe that by doing things for him we will do him some good. " A parent asked, " Well, won't it be a problem if my child attends a Montessori school for three years and enters the public school so far ahead? " To which Maria Montessori replied: " If you knew a famine was going to take place in three years, would you starve yourself for those three years in preparation? " " This is the treasure we need today - helping the child become indepenent of us and make his way by himself, receiving in return his gifts of hope and light. " " Supposing I said there was a planet without schools or teachers, study was unknown, and yet the inhabitants - doing nothing but living and walking about came to know all things, to carry in their minds the whole of learning: Would you not think I was romancing? Well just this, which seems so fanciful as to be nothing but the invention of a fertile imagination, is a reality. It is the child's way of learning. This is the path he follows. He learns everything without knowing he is learning it, and in doing so passes little from the unconscious to the conscious, treading always in the paths of joy and love. "

" Making use of his own will in his contact with his environment, he (the child) develops his various facilities and thus becomes in a sense his own creator. We should regard this secret effort of the child as something sacred. " " Social grace, inner discipline and joy. These are the birthright of the human being who has been allowed to develop essential human qualities. " " It is the spirit of the child that can determine the course of human progress and lead it perhaps even to a higher form of civilization. " " Our aim is not merely to make the child understand, and still less to force him to memorize, but so to touch his imagination as to enthuse him to his innermost core. " " The teacher's task is not a small easy one! She has to prepare a huge amount of knowledge to satisfy the child's mental hunger. She is not like the ordinary teacher, limited by a syllabus. The needs of the child are clearly more difficult to answer. " " A child needs freedom within limits. " " No one can be free if he is not independent... " " The children have shown love of work which no one suspected to be in them, and a calm and an orderliness in their movements, which surpassing the limits of correctness have entered into those of 'grace.' The spontaneous discipline and obedience which is seen in the whole class, constituted the most striking results of our method. " " The secret of good teaching is to regard the child's intelligence as a fertile field in which seeds may be sown, to grow under the heat of flaming imagination. " " A child is mysterious and powerful; And contains within himself the secret of human nature. " " If I were to establish a primary principle, it would be to constantly allow the child's participation in our lives ... To extend to the child this hospitality, to allow him to participate in our work can be difficult, but it costs nothing. Our time is a far more precious gift than material objects. " " Children are not only sensitive to silence, but also to a voice which calls them ... Out of that silence. "