Montessori from the Start: The Child at Home, from Birth to Age Three

nothing should be given to the brain that is not first given to the hand.

Certainly we want to build this environment on universal principles of beauty, simplicity, and order.

Our goal then is to build an environment for engagement for the infant, one that maintains a good balance of challenge and support, and where the adult is not overly involved.

For the human child, independence, the ability to do things on one’s own, is most important for its psychological component; it is the path to confidence and self-assurance.

outward manifestations of brain development are the child’s self-formation as an individual of growing independence, coordinated movement, language, and a developed will.

Our homes also should reflect adult needs for exploration, orientation, order, imagination, exactness, repetition, control of error, manipulation, perfection, and communication.

order todevelop our humanity, we must nurture the human tendencies in all of us.

Human infants use the stages of their development, as referred to in the Introduction, to help them in their task of self-formation.

most meaningful communication of all: the intimacy of love, understanding and respect of one human being for another in the home, the school, the workplace, in nature, our places of worship, and in our marriages.

This capacity for absorbing from the environment like a sponge soaking up moisture from its surroundings, which Montessori referred to as the “absorbent mind,” is a phenomenon of the child’s first six years.