El Montessori method of education has a history of over a hundred years and is still a globally recognized educational model. Its essence lies in awakening children’s inherent motivation to learn rather than forcing them to accept knowledge.
If you want to provide corresponding Montessori teaching aids as your child grows up, and choose suitable Montessori toys, you need to have a certain understanding and foundation of Montessori’s educational methods.
The Montessori method was developed by Italian educator Dr. Maria Montessori, drawing on her life experiences.
The essence of this method lies in fostering a child’s conscious and proactive spirit of learning and exploration. Montessori education utilizes a diverse range of teaching aids, all tailored to children’s developmental stages.
Montessori education encompasses daily life, sensory development, mathematics, language, science, and culture.
Children develop their personalities through the repetitive manipulation of Montessori teaching toys, thereby developing diverse abilities through free exploration and manipulation.
If you want to provide corresponding Montessori teaching aids as your child grows up, and choose suitable Montessori toys, you need to have a certain understanding and foundation of Montessori’s educational methods.
Montessori Educational Philosophy
The Montessori educational philosophy can be summarized as follows:
1. Helping Human Being Become Person
Montessori education helps human beings become person. The human being is the biological individual at birth. Being a person is being educated, nurtured, and possessing a personality. This is the meaning of Montessori education: only through the formation of personality can one become a true person.
2. Spontaneous Intelligence
The desire to learn is driven by innate intelligence—a child’s inherent urge to pursue knowledge and development. If this inner drive is not activated through education, the child’s immense inherent energy will stagnate and be wasted.
3. Human Creativity
In fact, this can be considered a natural human trait; creativity comes naturally to humans. Montessori believed that the constant coordination of manual activity and language ultimately fosters a child’s personality, which then develops various creative abilities as the personality develops.
4. Assisting Children in Self-Development
Traditional education involves adults constantly instructing children on what to do, and children simply obey. Montessori education, on the other hand, allows children to unleash their own potential and develop themselves in all aspects through practical, personal activities. This is the true meaning of education.
5. Prepared Environment
Montessori believed that the environment is a living being, prepared by adults with a clear understanding of the child’s purpose. This environment encompasses all the positive elements necessary for a child’s growth, while also eliminating any elements that are detrimental to a child’s growth.
Three Stages of Montessori Education
The Montessori method divides a child’s education into three stages: early childhood development (0-3 años), independent learning (3-6 años), and specialized learning (6-12 años). Each stage has different characteristics and goals, and uses corresponding teaching methods to promote children’s growth and learning.
Phase 1: 0-3 years old children's training
During this stage, Montessori education focuses on developing children’s senses, fine motor skills, and language skills.
Montessori education believes that the early childhood brain is most active and receptive to knowledge, and therefore should be provided with rich stimulation and experiences. During this stage, observation and guidance are essential, and challenging environments should be created to encourage independent exploration and learning.
Between the ages of 0 and 1, children primarily learn about the world through their senses. They explore their surroundings through sight, hearing, taste, and touch.
Montessori environments offer a variety of objects with different textures, bright colors, and shapes, such as soft plush toys, smooth building blocks, and ringing bells. Children are encouraged to touch, grasp, and shake these objects, stimulating their senses of touch, vision, and hearing.
Children aged 1-2 begin to develop more control over their movements and enjoy walking, climbing, and manipulating objects. Montessori classrooms at this age often feature dedicated activity areas, such as small staircases, slides, and building blocks, to meet children’s motor development needs.
They also provide simple self-care tools like dressing boards, spoons, and cups to help children learn basic life skills like dressing and feeding themselves, fostering independence.
By the age of two or three, children’s language skills develop rapidly, and they begin to develop their own ideas and expressions. Montessori teachers engage in extensive language communication with children, telling them stories and singing nursery rhymes.
The classroom is also equipped with a variety of language teaching aids, such as alphabet cards, puzzles, and picture books, to stimulate children’s interest in language and lay the foundation for future reading and writing.
Phase 2: Independent learning for 3-6 años
At this stage, Montessori education emphasizes independent learning and self-development. By observing each child’s needs and interests, appropriate learning environments and materials are provided.
Children learn through independent choice and self-management, discovering and mastering knowledge and skills through a variety of teaching aids and materials.
Children aged 3-4 enter a new stage of development. Their attention spans become sharper, and they become more curious about their surroundings.
In a Montessori environment, there are dedicated sensory areas offering various sensory aids, such as color palettes, tactile boards, and taste bottles, to help children further refine their sensory experiences and enhance their observation and perception skills.
Mathematics education is also gradually introduced during this stage. Through Montessori math aids such as spindle boxes, number cards, and geometric figure panels, children can intuitively understand concepts such as quantity, números, and shapes, transitioning from concrete manipulation to abstract mathematical thinking.
Children aged 4-5 begin to demonstrate stronger imagination and creativity. Montessori classrooms encourage role-playing, providing props such as dollhouses, shops, and hospitals. This allows children to use their imaginations and imitate adult life, while also developing their social and language skills.
Children at this age also show a strong interest in art. Montessori education offers activities such as painting and crafts, allowing children to freely express their thoughts and feelings.
Teachers guide children to observe their surroundings and encourage them to create with a variety of materials and methods, cultivating their aesthetic and creative abilities.
Children aged 5-6 are about to enter elementary school and need comprehensive preparation. Montessori education emphasizes the development of foundational skills, including reading, escribiendo, and arithmetic.
Using teaching aids such as sandpaper alphabet boards and pinyin cards, children learn to pronounce and write letters. Using gold beads and addition boards, they practice mathematical operations to improve their calculation skills.
Furthermore, Montessori education focuses on cultivating children’s concentration, sense of order, and independence, helping them transition smoothly into elementary school.
Phase 3: 6-12 years old start specialized learning
During this stage, Montessori education encourages children to engage in the study of specific subjects. Teachers provide specific subject-specific activities and materials, such as mathematics, language, science, geography, etc.. At the same time, teachers also help children develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
Principles for Choosing Montessori Toys
The selection of Montessori toys should follow the core of its educational philosophy – promoting children’s independent development through real and orderly sensory experiences. We should have some key selection principles when choosing Montessori educational toys.
1.Core Principles
(1) Simulation and lifelikeness
Give priority to toys that simulate real-life scenes. For example, fruit-cutting toys should have realistic textures (such as tomato stems and carrot lines) and operational feedback (such as “click” efectos sonoros). These toys can help children develop cognition and logical thinking through role-playing.
(2) Gradualness and operability
Select teaching aids with appropriate difficulty levels that match the student’s age. For example, busy books (for training life skills such as buttoning and shoe lacing) or cylinder teaching aids (for understanding spatial concepts through height sorting) are suitable for children aged 1-2 años. Children aged 3 and above can try toys that require logical thinking, such as puzzles.
2. Safety and Detail Requirements
Material Safety: Choose toys with rounded corners, no burrs, and safety certifications, such as a felt busy book or a food-grade plastic slicing machine.
Convenient Storage: A matching storage basket or container can help foster a child’s sense of order. For example, the Rubber Duck Fruit Slicing Machine can be stored entirely in a basket.
3. Educational Function Verification
Sensory Development: Develop children through multi-dimensional stimulation of touch (e.g., different materials), vision (color classification), and hearing (efectos sonoros).
Independence Development: Choose toys that children can operate independently, such as number stacking blocks that can be strung together and stacked high, to gradually improve hand-eye coordination.
Selection of Montessori Toys
Children aged 0 a 1
For children aged 0 a 1, the toys we provide should be slightly larger, no tóxico, easy to disinfect and clean, have simple functions, and conform to the laws of children’s physical development. Only in this way can they play their greatest role, and not just be items that “liberate” adults and children for casual entertainment.
Around three months old, we can prepare a gym rack for babies, hanging wooden or cotton items in distinct colors. Mothers with craft skills can make their own or purchase one.
The goal is to help babies develop arm strength, wrist dexterity, finger touch, and grip. When paired with sounds, it can also help them develop their hearing.
After 3 months, you can provide: chewable Manhattan balls, wooden rattles/clappers (unpainted wood), fruit and vegetable teething sticks (for use when adding complementary foods around 6 months), cloth books, cloth/cotton dolls, etc..
There are many toys of this kind on the Internet. When choosing, mothers should try to follow the standards of: simple and uncomplicated colors, soft and unirritating sounds, and an appropriate size to better protect the baby’s vision and hearing.
Small toys with small parts are not suitable for babies at this stage. This is because they are in the oral sensitivity stage and learn about the world through their mouths.
To support the growth of their teeth, they will involuntarily put objects in their mouths to feel the softness, hardness, taste, and temperature of the objects. If there are small objects in the surrounding environment, it will definitely be very dangerous.
In addition to the oral sensitivity period, the hands also develop during this period. Through grasping exercises and tactile sensations, children learn about everything around them.
If parents can provide children with objects made of various materials (wood – hard, cloth/dolls – soft, plástico – light, etc.) with different tactile sensations and introduce them to them through language, they will benefit greatly in both cognitive language development and sensory development.
Children aged 1.5 a 4 años
When children are around 1.5 a 4 años, they will enter a sensitive period of small things, self-awareness, creativity development, and a sense of order.
The development patterns and speeds of each child are different. We can decide whether to provide relevant assistance items (toys) or support forces based on the emergence of these sensitive periods.
Small Object Sensitivity Period:
The symptoms of this period include curiosity about small objects in daily life, which leads to discovery and exploration. Children develop an interest in small insects in the dirt, fallen leaves, muddy stones, small patterns on clothing, small beads on the ground, and small objects in toys. They enjoy observing, discovering, and collecting these objects.
On the premise of ensuring safety, mothers can give their children time and freedom to observe, protect their desire to observe, accept their behavior, and not deny or stop this matter for hygiene or other reasons, because it is a good time to cultivate children’s habits of paying attention to details and managing details. “Not disturbing” at this time is also a protection for children’s concentration.
Furthermore, we can take advantage of babies’ curiosity about small things and then extend the “treasures” they have collected so that they can grow more.
For example, in terms of cognition: learn the names of plants and the shapes of various leaves from the leaves you pick up; become familiar with the names and living habits of insects in the soil, and use stones covered in soil to learn concepts of size and comparative degrees, etc..
In terms of motor skills:
We can provide brushes for babies to “bathe” stones covered with mud, prepare beautiful beads, choose the size of the holes according to the children’s abilities, and then let the babies string the beads together; during these activities, our hand-eye coordination, hand flexibility/cooperation, and control exercises can be practiced.
Self-awareness:
The arrival of the sensitive period of self-awareness marks the beginning of a child’s self-awareness. Children enjoy independent thinking and are keen to experiment. By participating in “events,” they learn to understand themselves, enhance their understanding of relationships with others, y generar confianza.
Taking advantage of this characteristic, we should provide children at this stage with tools that develop finger dexterity, hand-eye coordination, hand strength, and creativity.
For example, everyday tasks include pouring water, using a spoon, pulling up pants, and putting on shoes.
This provides children with more opportunities to practice and learn to care for themselves, building their confidence. Hammering toys are also appropriate at this stage; they not only develop hand strength and wrist dexterity, but also provide a foundation for understanding the law of conservation of matter.
Similarly, when children are unable to protect themselves, adults not only have the obligation and responsibility to be vigilant and protect children, but also need to provide them with safety information so they can learn to protect themselves.
