Maria Montessori
Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4057664119902
Table of Contents
Didactic Material for the Preparation for Writing and Arithmetic
LANGUAGE AND KNOWLEDGE OF THE WORLD
Exercises for the Management of the Instrument of Writing
Exercises for the Writing of Alphabetical Signs
DIDACTIC MATERIAL FOR MUSICAL READING.
PREFACE
If a preface is a light which should serve to illumine the contents of a volume, I choose, not words, but human figures to illustrate this little book intended to enter families where children are growing up. I therefore recall here, as an eloquent symbol, Helen Keller and Mrs. Anne Sullivan Macy, who are, by their example, both teachers to myself––and, before the world, living documents of the miracle in education.
In fact, Helen Keller is a marvelous example of the phenomenon common to all human beings: the possibility of the liberation of the imprisoned spirit of man by the education of the senses. Here lies the basis of the method of education of which the book gives a succinct idea.
If one only of the senses sufficed to make of Helen Keller a woman of exceptional culture and a writer, who better than she proves the potency of that method of education which builds on the senses? If Helen Keller attained through exquisite natural gifts to an elevated conception viii of the world, who better than she proves that in the inmost self of man lies the spirit ready to reveal itself?
Helen, clasp to your heart these little children, since they, above all others, will understand you. They are your younger brothers: when, with bandaged eyes and in silence, they touch with their little hands, profound impressions rise in their consciousness, and they exclaim with a new form of happiness: “I see with my hands.” They alone, then, can fully understand the drama of the mysterious privilege your soul has known. When, in darkness and in silence, their spirit left free to expand, their intellectual energy redoubled, they become able to read and write without having learnt, almost as it were by intuition, they, only they, can understand in part the ecstasy which God granted you on the luminous path of learning.
Maria Montessori.
ILLUSTRATIONS
Dr. Maria Montessori | Frontispiece | |
FIG. | PAGE | |
1. | Cupboard with Apparatus | 12 |
2. | The Montessori Pædometer | 13 |
3. | Frames for Lacing and Buttoning | 22 |
4. | Child Buttoning On Frame | 23 |
5. | Cylinders Decreasing in Diameter only | 30 |
6. | Cylinders Decreasing in Diameter and Height | 30 |
7. | Cylinders Decreasing in Height only | 30 |
8. | Child using Case of Cylinders | 31 |
9. | The Tower | 31 |
10. | Child Playing with Tower | 31 |
11. | The Broad Stair | 36 |
12. | The Long Stair | 36 |
13. | Board with Rough and Smooth Surfaces | 37 |
14. | Board with Gummed Strips of Paper | 37 |
15. | Wood Tablets Differing in Weight | 37 |
Color Spools | 42 | |
16. | Cabinet with Drawers to hold Geometrical Insets | 44 |
17. | Set of Six Circles | 44 |
18. | Set of Six Rectangles | 45 |
19. | Set of Six Triangles | 45 |
20. | Set of Six Polygons | 46 |
21. | Set of Six Irregular Figures | 46 |
22. | Set of Four Blanks and Two Irregular Figures | 47 |
23. | Frame to hold Geometrical Insets | 48 |
24. | Child Touching the Insets | 49 |
25. | Series of Cards with Geometrical Forms |