MONTESSORI PRINCIPLES

Montessori education is an educational approach developed by Maria Montessori and characterized by an emphasis on independence, freedom within limits, and respect for a child’s natural psychological, physical, and social development.

Montessori schools provide an environment that supports the child’s natural development.

Montessori education enables children to develop the fundamental capacities that they need to become happy and fulfilled adults who contribute to our society.

Maria Montessori opened her first classroom in 1907, the Casa dei Bambini, or Children’s House, in Rome. From the beginning, Montessori based her work on her observations of children and experimentation with the environment, materials, and lessons available to them. She frequently referred to her work as “scientific pedagogy”.

QUOTES

“As soon as the children find something that interests them they lose their instability and learn to concentrate”

Maria Montessori – The secret of Childhood

QUOTES

“The education of even a very small child, therefore, does not aim at preparing him for school but for life”

Maria Montessori – The Discovery of the Child

QUOTES

“Work is the cornerstone of freedom. The freedom of our children has as limits, the community, for freedom does not mean doing what one wants, but being master of oneself”

Maria Montessori – Basic Ideas of Montessori’s Educational Theory

QUOTES

“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”

Maria Montessori

QUOTES

“What the hand does, the mind remembers”

Maria Montessori

Montessori education is fundamentally a model of human development, and an educational approach based on that model. The model has two basic principles:

  1. children engage in psychological self-construction by means of interaction with their environment.
  2. children, especially under the age of six, have an innate path of psychological development.

Based on her observations, Montessori believed that children at liberty to choose and act freely within an environment prepared according to her model would act spontaneously for optimal development.

“More then 100 years later we still follow these principles helping the children to choose and act freely in order to develop at their best.”

Partenariat AMI

The Montessori School Geneva works with trained AMI teachers and strongly believes in the AMI’s guidelines.

What is the Association Montessori Internationale?

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