So the first period of life has been fixed for the storing of impressions from the environment, and is therefore the period of the greatest psychic activity; it is the activity of absorbing everything that there is in the environment.

Maria Montessori, Education for a New World

Respect the children's personalities, understand their developmental needs, and appreciate their achievements. In this way you avoid standing opposite the children as a representative of arbitrary authority and take your place beside them as wiser persons who understand them and who are willing to help them in their endeavours.

Mario Montessori Jr, Education for Human Development

If material is given to a child too soon, it seems too difficult; if too late, it is boring. If however, the time is right, it will be experienced as something the child can conquer.

Mario Montessori Jr, Education for Human Development

The development of the senses actually precedes that of the higher intellectual faculties.

Maria Montessori, The Discovery of the Child

There is clearly then, a gap between what is in the mind and what can be expressed. This is particularly true in learning processes, when one is dealing with something previously unknown.

Mario Montessori Jr, Education for Human Development

Intellectual growth depends upon internalising events into a storage system that corresponds to the environment. It is this system that makes possible the child's increasing ability to go beyond the information encountered on a single occasion. He does this by making predictions and extrapolations from his stored model of the world.

Mario Montessori Jr, Education for Human Development

A child does not read until he receives ideas from the written word.

Maria Montessori, The Discovery of the Child