Children's Sensitive Periods

Children's Sensitive Periods

  • Submitted By: lamokhtar
  • Date Submitted: 12/20/2010 4:29 AM
  • Category: Philosophy
  • Words: 2169
  • Page: 9
  • Views: 6

Maria Montessori noticed that the children had sensitive periods. During these sensitive periods the child works within one area of the environment at a time. Sensitive periods bring on intense concentration, so intense that the child will be almost unaware of the rest of his surroundings. The child during sensitive periods will also continuously repeat an activity until an inner satisfaction is met. The Montessori method calls this process of repetition normalizationMontessori explained the accomplishments of the child's highly developed cognitive skills with a description of what she called the absorbent mind. Montessori often said, "Impressions do not merely enter his mind; they form it" (Absorbent Mind, 1995). The absorbent mind first prepares the unconscious. The mind then slowly awakens to the conscious level, establishing memory, and the power to understand and reason. The knowledge that the child is internally seeking is then absorbed.
The Montessori method was created so that Maria Montessori's philosophy could be implemented. Montessori believed the environment was second to life itself. She said, "it can modify in that it can help or hinder, but it can never create" (The Montessori Method, 1912). The Montessori environment is called the prepared environment. There are six essential components to the prepared environment: freedom, structure and order, reality and nature, beauty and atmosphere, the didactic materials, and the development of community life.
A child having freedom in a prepared environment will be able to develop physically, mentally, and emotionally to his or her full potential. The child uses this freedom to work with the educational materials and to socialize with others. All the materials are designed to fulfill the inner desire for self-construction and spiritual development of the child. The materials indirectly prepare the child for future learning by capturing the child's attention and initiating concentration. The materials at...

Similar Essays