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

The environment must be so arranged that they can carry out these activities in their own way and at their own rate.

Mario Montessori Jr, Education for Human Development

The environment should not be centred on a single function or skill, but call to the child's whole personality.

Mario Montessori Jr, Education for Human Development

The prepared environment should bring the world at large, within the reach of the child at whatever stage of development it is, at a given moment.

Mario Montessori Jr, Education for Human Development

Psychology regards the adequate gratification of inner needs as indispensable to the optimal development of the personality. These needs are not only for food, rest and affection, but also for stimulation, self-development, exploration, independence and responsibility.

Mario Montessori Jr, Education for Human Development

All ego functions, like perception, thinking, language, the comprehension of objects, and the coordination of movements and learning processes in general, require a long period of indirect preparation before they emerge as integrated aspects of the personality.

Mario Montessori Jr, Education for Human Development

Little children touch everything they see thus obtaining a double image (visual and muscular) of the countless objects which they encounter in their environment.

Maria Montessori, The Discovery of the Child

The fact that practically all the sensorial exercises are accompanied by movements shows that kinaesthetic perceptions have a prominent role even at a very early age.

Maria Montessori, The Discovery of the Child

One of the most important practical aspects of our method has been to make the training of the muscles enter into the very life of the children so that it is intimately connected with their daily activities. Education in movement is thus fully incorporated into the education of the child's personality.

Maria Montessori, The Discovery of the Child

The prepared environment should reflect that amount of organisation and order necessary for a community to function properly. The rules used to achieve this should be valid for all.

Mario Montessori Jr, Education for Human Development

Let the children be free, encourage them; let them run outside when it is raining, let them remove their shoes when they find a puddle of water; and when the grass of the meadows is damp with dew, let them run on it and trample it with their bare feet; let them rest peacefully when a tree invites them to sleep beneath its shade; let them shout and laugh when the sun wakes them in the morning.

Maria Montessori, The Discovery of the Child

The embryonic development of each of its parts must in the end become integrated when the hand is at work and the mind is guiding it. If outer conditions prevent this integration from occurring the result is an unequal development.

Maria Montessori, The Absorbent Mind

All our handling of him will bear fruit, not only at the moment, but in the man he is destined to become. To understand the baby's mind it is absolutely essential to take the path of observation and discovery.

Maria Montessori, The Absorbent Mind

While he is passing through a phase of active construction of his psyche, the child often feels the deepest impulse to bring order into what, according to his logic, is in a state of confusion.

Maria Montessori, The Absorbent Mind