Carolyn Sherwin Bailey

Montessori-trained children were self-controlled, free, happy, good.

geometric forms; circles, triangles, squares that they are learning to recognize through the “eyes in their fingers,” and which will help them to see with the mind’s eye the form that makes the beauty of our world.

So the children learn through the exercise of the senses.

This may be a white day in the child’s mind growth,” she thinks, but she does not suggest, or hurry the miracle. She only waits, hopes, watches.

Silence is written on the blackboard. Three hours have passed in which over thirty children, barely out of babyhood, have worked incessantly at many different occupations, have moved gracefully and with complete freedom about the room, have changed occupations as often as they wished, have not once quarreled. But now, out of the ordered disorder, comes a marvelous hush. No word is spoken, but one baby after another, glancing the written sign, drops back with closed eyes into a hushed silence in which the whir of bird wings in the garden, the fluttering of casement hangings, the far-away sound of a bell are audible.

has he been inspired to feel stillness.

Montessori children. They open their souls as flowers do, naturally, freely, surely.

spirit of Montessori. We will have unlimited patience with the mistakes and idiosyncrasies of childhood, remembering that we do not aim to develop little men and women but only as nearly perfect children as we can.

home record of the child’s mental, moral, and physical gain should be kept

naturally, where their longing to see and touch and weigh and smell and taste is satisfied as far as can be arranged, and where they are led to be as independent of adult help as possible, is laying the foundation for the education of Montessori.