How is the child’s exploration and orientation in his physical environment complimented by the Montessori Cultural materials and presentation?
“'The world’ is a phrase to which no sensorial image corresponds” (Absorbent Mind, p 155), Dr Maria Montessori discovered through her accurate observations that throughout history, humans have relied on their ingenuity and adaptability for survival. Regardless of all the changes and differences between people, they all have followed similar patterns of exploration, perfection, and creativity. After years of observation, Dr. Maria Montessori was able to identify the main important tendencies that support each and every human being to construct, refine and learn about the world around him. That is why she considered the importance of introducing the abstract concept of the world in a concrete manner through the "Cultural activities", and to everyone’s surprise, she discovered that the child was the first one in the row of audience. The child’s ability of absorption and exploration is unlimited, thus the amount of knowledge and information the child can acquire and learn are limitless. Dr. Maria Montessori stated that “the mind of the child is capable of acquiring culture at a period of life when nobody would have thought it possible” (Absorbent Mind, p 151).
Through Dr. Maria Montessori’s great observations in a large variety of cultural environments, she could extract fourteen specific behavioral traits which she called the “tendencies of man”. All these traits work on our behaviors like a single force and help the child identify specific aspects of the culture. These universal tendencies are; exploration, order, gregariousness, communication, abstraction, curiosity, calculation, repetition, concentration, self-control, perfection, creativity, independence and work, all which build up the process of cultural adaptation.
The first trait, exploration; is the secret behind discovering everything around searching for...