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Like many Montessori educators, I was immediately drawn to the materials Maria Montessori designed for children in the conscious absorbent mind. They are simple, beautiful, and attractive to children. To many, including some parents, these materials are the essence of Montessori. However, Maria Montessori herself thought of her Method as going far beyond her didactic materials.
In our work, my fellow Infant & Toddler Montessori guides and I engage in a continual study of where each child is developmentally, and based on these observations, we create and re-create the environment to meet their needs. The Montessori Birth Centre in Rome grew out of the Montessori School for Infant Assistants, founded by Adele Costa Gnocchi, an early student of Montessori's, who applied Montessori's ideas to her courses geared for caregivers of children under the age of 3. The focus of these courses, and the Birth Centre, was not materials but observation. The advice was "Eyes to See With." The primary focus for each "Assistant to Infancy" student was to study each child and create a suitable environment for them.
We view the environment as a live ingredient, to be adapted and improved right down to the smallest details so that it may best answer the children's needs.... The main objective is to favour uninterrupted individual exploration which is the child's natural state of activity. (Il Quaderno Montessori, 1993, p. 62)
Much of the work at the Birth Centre was practical living. For those of us who observe infants and toddlers, it is apparent that what is most attractive to the child in the unconscious absorbent mind, from birth to about age 3, is the real work in the home and the Montessori environment. Infants and toddlers absorb everything around them and begin to imitate; they revel in being able to do what their parents and teachers, and older children, are doing. This imitation is often the beginning of concentrated work. Setting the table, feeding themselves, cleaning the table, washing dishes, cleaning spills, blowing their nose, helping with laundry, watering the garden, washing the tables, cleaning the windows, recycling trash/food, pouring their milk, and preparing food-these activities are all totally engaging to the older infant and toddler. Maria Montessori (1946, p. 65) wrote of the value...