... the first thing his education demands is the provision of an environment in which he can develop the powers given him by nature. This does not mean just to amuse him and let him do what he likes. But it does mean that we have to adjust our minds to doing a work of collaboration with nature, to being obedient to one of her laws, the law which decrees that development comes from environmental experience.
Maria MontessoriThe โabsorbent mindโ welcomes everything, puts its hope in everything, accepts poverty equally with wealth, adopts any religion and the prejudices and habits of its countrymen, incarnating all in itself. This is the child!
Maria MontessoriThe development of the child during the first three years after birth is unequaled in intensity and importance by any period that precedes or follows in the whole life of the child.
Maria MontessoriImagination does not become great until human beings, given the courage and the strength, use it to create.
Maria MontessoriThere is in the child a special kind of sensitivity which leads him to absorb everything about him, and it is this work of observing and absorbing that alone enables him to adapt himself to life
Maria MontessoriLearning to speak, therefore, and the power it brings of intelligent converse with others, is a most impressive further step along the path of independence ... Learning to walk is especially significant, not only because it is supremely complex, but because it is done in the first year of life.
Maria Montessori