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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2011 with funding from 
 The Library of Congress 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/montessorimanualOOfish 
 
THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
Dr. Montessori 
 
' THE 
 MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 IN WHICH DR. MONTESSORI 'S TEACHINGS AND EDUCATIONAL 
 
 OCCUPATIONS ARE ARRANGED IN PRACTICAL EXERCISES 
 
 OR LESSONS FOR THE MOTHER OR THE TEACHER 
 
 DOROTHY CANFIELD J?ISHER 
 
 AUTHOR OP "A MONTESSORI MOTHER," 
 "THE SQUIRREL-CAGE," ETC. 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 THE W. E. RICHARDSON CO. 
 
 1913 
 
\J& 
 
 
 
 
 Copyright 1918 
 
 BY 
 
 THE W. E. RICHARDSON CO. 
 
 All Rights Reserved, Including That 
 
 of Translation into Foreign 
 
 Languages. 
 
 ©CI.A35754Q ^y 
 2L§ <%_ 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 It is now a year since the publication of ''The Montessori 
 Mother, ' ' a year which has brought to the author of that volume a 
 great mass of correspondence and innumerable personal interviews 
 with American mothers interested in the new ideas about the edu- 
 cation of young children. This first-hand experience with a wide 
 circle of searchers for information has shown me the need, in the 
 case of mothers untrained in educational methods, of a more con- 
 crete and definite and less philosophical presentation of the ideas of 
 the great Italian teacher. 
 
 This unpretentious Manual is designed to meet that need and to 
 be used by mothers of young children. 
 
 It is also hoped that teachers will receive valuable hints from 
 the suggestions in its pages, which their greater experience and pro- 
 fessional training will enable them to expand into school-room exer- 
 cises. For instance, many of the games and all of the gymnastic 
 exercises suggested are practicable and desirable for any play- 
 ground where young children gather. 
 
 As a majority of the letters received from inquiring mothers 
 have been concerned with the prickly questions of obedience and 
 the general disciplinary atmosphere of the young child's life, I 
 have thought best to add to the remarks about the use of the manu- 
 factured and home-made apparatus, some practical hints about the 
 disciplinary management of young children. It is my earnest hope 
 that these suggestions as to the daily routine of life for young chil- 
 dren will aid some of the mothers perplexed about the problem of 
 teaching their children the habit of cheerful, sunny self-discipline 
 and self-control. 
 
 Dorothy Caotield Fisher. 
 Arlington, Vermont, August, 1913. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 Something Wrong with Modern Education 9-15 
 
 Dr. Montessori to the Rescue — Her Great Idea 16-21 
 
 An Italian Casa dei Bambini 22-29 
 
 Use of the Apparatus in American Homes and Schools, 
 
 for Exercises and Details, See Index. 30-102 
 
 Nature Study 103-106 
 
 Montessori Discipline and Obedience 107-123 
 
 Some Questions that are Answered for Mothers and 
 
 Teachers 24 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Dr. Montessori Frontispiece 
 
 At Undirected Play with the Didactic or Sense Training 
 
 Materials , 14 
 
 Children Busy with the Cylindrical Inserts 20 
 
 The Dressing Frames Are Fascinating for Small Children 20 
 Learning Muscular Co-ordination ey Means of Mental 
 
 Insets 20 
 
 The Blindfold Game with the Wooden Insets — Develop- 
 ing the Muscular Sense 20 
 
 Exercising the Sense of Touch Combined with Muscular 
 
 Sense in Learning the Form of Letters 38 
 
 Working with the Montessori Movable Alphabet 38 
 
 A Spontaneous Writing Lesson 54 
 
 The Montessori Long Stair 54 
 
 Children Putting Away Didactic Material, National Kin- 
 dergarten College, Chicago 86 
 
 torresdale house 102 
 
 Junior Montessori Room, Torresdale 102 
 
 KEPEESENTATIVE PAETS OF THE MONTESSOEI DIDACTIC 
 APPAEATUS 
 
 (Opposite Page 30) 
 
 Color Spools Page 30 
 
 Buttoning and Lacing Frames, Exercise Two Plate I 
 
 Solid Geometrical Insets, Exercise One . . , Plate II 
 
 The Long Stair, Exercise Six Plate II 
 
 The Tower, Exercise Four Plate III 
 
 7 
 
8 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 The Broad Stair, Exercise Five Plate III 
 
 Sandpaper Board, No. 1, Exercise Seven Plate IV 
 
 Sandpaper Board, No. 2, Exercise Eight Plate IV 
 
 Color Boxes, Exercises Sixteen and Seventeen Plate V 
 
 Sound Boxes, Exercise Ten Plate V 
 
 Plain Geometrical Insets, Exercises Eleven and Twelve.Plate VI 
 
 Plain Geometrical Forms, Exercise Thirteen Plate VII 
 
 Parts of Movable Alphabet, Exercise Nineteen Plate VIII 
 
 Computing Boxes, Exercises Twenty-three and 
 
 Twenty-four , Plate VIII 
 
 Illustrations in this volume, if not otherwise indicated below the illus- 
 trations themselves, are copyrighted 1913, by The House of Childhood, Inc., 
 200 Fifth Ave., New York, N. Y. This firm has been designated by Dr. 
 Montessori as the sole licensee for her apparatus in the United States and 
 Canada. They manufacture and distribute the Didactic Apparatus herein 
 illustrated. 
 
THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 i 
 
 SOMETHING WRONG WITH MODERN 
 EDUCATION 
 
 One of the most distinguishing features of twen- 
 tieth-century life is the deep-rooted, wide-spread 
 dissatisfaction with the way modern children are 
 being educated. In most great world-centers one 
 finds the same naive certainty that there, in that 
 spot, the problem is most insoluble, and that else- 
 where conditions are better. In our America 
 everyone is decrying our national fault of cheap 
 superficiality as the poison of our schools and look- 
 ing with longing eyes toward the "thoroughness" 
 of German and English methods. In England 
 they are bewailing their hide-bound, slow conserv- 
 atism and envying American flexibility and quick- 
 ness in facing the problem of education. In 
 France they are appalled at the mental inertia of 
 the pupils and in Germany they are crying out 
 that their insistence on the letter has killed the 
 spirit. 
 
10 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 The truth seems to be that we are suddenly 
 demanding more of education than we ever before 
 dreamed possible. It is not that our schools or 
 our methods of education are worse than those 
 which have preceded them, but that we see them 
 to be so far, far below what they might be — what 
 they ought to be. The disquieting truth which 
 has so upset us all is that there is no real reason 
 why every child should not be really educated in 
 the way which would bring out the greatest 
 number possible of his own individual powers, 
 which are, of course, different from the powers 
 of every other human being in the world. 
 
 We are all dolefully agreed that this is not being 
 done, that a large per cent of the innate abilities 
 of the population of the world is wasted for lack 
 of proper training, and that a tragic per cent of 
 the time spent in school, is spent to no purpose, 
 is practically blotted from the all-too-short lives 
 of the helpless children, subjected to a meaningless 
 routine. 
 
 A highly successful head of a department in 
 a New York Public High School told me, not 
 long ago, that after his lifetime of experience 
 in modern education he had sickening moments of 
 doubt as to whether the whole system did not do 
 more harm than good, inasmuch as it seemed to 
 crush out what small natural, genuine living 
 
SOMETHING WRONG WITH MODERN EDUCATION 11 
 
 abilities the children have, in order to replace 
 these by a certain amount of rote-learned " in- 
 formation." "We destroy," he said, sadly, "the 
 living, vital, eternal and immortal processes of 
 invention, resourcefulness and logic and prop up 
 unsteadily in their places, a large number of facts, 
 which will all be swept away by the research of 
 the next fifty years." 
 
 This note of alarm is to be heard from every 
 corner of the civilized world, clear, unmistakable, 
 practically unanimous. But the chorus of sug- 
 gested causes for this lamentable condition is confus- 
 ing in its variety; while as for possible remedies, 
 the contradictory recommendations are deafening 
 and innumerable. 
 
 Time Unpeofitably Spent. — And yet there are 
 one or two common notes, one or two commonly 
 admitted flaws in present systems of education. 
 Everywhere people cry out that children do not 
 make the most of their time; that only a small 
 part of their school-life is spent in educating 
 themselves; that most of it seems to be spent 
 unprofitably, for one reason or another, mostly for 
 reasons connected with our traditional ideals of 
 school order and discipline and regularity. And 
 yet these ideals are, in spite of all the uneasiness, 
 usually accepted unquestioningly, as though they 
 were axiomatic laws of nature. We are told that 
 
12 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 with modern conditions, there cannot be, at the 
 very least, less than thirty children in a class; 
 which means with present school methods that dur- 
 ing a great deal of the time, twenty-nine children 
 are sitting passively, waiting their turn, while one 
 child is getting a little brief educational exercise; 
 which means that lessons must be kept down to 
 the capacity of the dullest of the thirty and, 
 therefore, that twenty-nine children, finishing their 
 lesson before him, must pass empty, profitless time, 
 varying in a vicious ratio according to their 
 native ability. 
 
 The Bright "Child Unprovided for by Present 
 System. — Everyone must remember the pregnant 
 exclamation of the old educator at the great edu- 
 cational convention, "We have methods for the 
 dull child, and systems for the deficient child, but 
 God help the bright child!" 
 
 To keep thirty children moving as one, which 
 is (so we seem to think) the only way to avoid 
 intellectual and moral anarchy and chaos, a great 
 deal of avowed and a still greater deal of un- 
 avowed marking-time is necessary. One boy has 
 a natural gift for mathematics, and in two months 
 time has mastered the arithmetical work intended 
 for the year in his class. Is his mind given more 
 of the food it craves and which it can so well 
 digest? Is he allowed to go on, to take the next 
 
SOMETHING WRONG WITH MODERN EDUCATION 13 
 
 step for which he is so eagerly ready? Not at 
 all. His memory is not quick to retain the in- 
 sanities of English spelling, and hence, so goes our 
 logic, he must wait a year before he is allowed to 
 go forward in mathematics. He must waste a year 
 of his short life — it is even worse than wasted, for 
 the continual reiteration in daily recitations of 
 problems which he has already mastered, dull the 
 natural keenness of his mind and sicken him of 
 the whole subject; so that when he is finally 
 allowed to advance, he has but a listless attention 
 for what, ten months before, would have been an 
 intellectual feast for an eager appetite. 
 
 Arbitrary Classification- Undesirable. — Our edu- 
 cational specialists admit that this is unfortunate, 
 but insist that it is inevitable. What can be done? 
 A big schoolhouse, containing six hundred chil- 
 dren, would be, we are told, in utter confusion 
 and turmoil if the children were allowed continu- 
 ally to pass from one class to another. Who 
 would decide every day or even every week which 
 class each child belonged to? As if it made the 
 slightest difference what class a child belongs to, 
 if he is being satisfactorily educated! It seems 
 incredible to us now that in the eighteenth cen- 
 tury when Braddock's soldiers went marching out 
 to fight the Indians, that no one thought of ask- 
 ing, "What is the good of all those fine red coats, 
 
14 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 if the soldiers only fight the worse because of 
 them?" Possibly in the twenty-first century it 
 will seem incredible that none of us asked, "What 
 is the good of classifying children arbitrarily if 
 they only learn the worse because of it?" Those 
 ordered phalanxes, marching up and down our 
 well-ordered schoolhouse halls, are all very well; 
 but have they anything to do with educating the 
 individual child — and, of course, the individual 
 child is all we ever have to educate. 
 
 Children Become Passive. — In the chorus of 
 complaint of our systems of education, I detect 
 another note common to all countries and all tem- 
 peraments. Somehow, we accuse ourselves, we 
 have mismanaged things so that children in the 
 schoolroom have a strange tradition of passivity, 
 instead of their natural buoyant impulse to action, 
 so noticeable on their playgrounds. As one teacher 
 cried out to me not long ago in a fit of exaspera- 
 tion, "By the time they reach me they haven't 
 enough intellectual curiosity left to save their 
 minds alive! Do what I will, all they do is to 
 sit back and watch me teach." In our reaction 
 from the piercing intellectual bleakness of the 
 Puritan regime of force in education, we seem to 
 have created in our schoolrooms an enervating 
 atmosphere in which there is but little brisk, tonic 
 invitation to keep moving intellectually. The child 
 
undirected play with the didactic or sense-training materials 
 
SOMETHING WRONG WITH MODERN EDUCATION 15 
 
 who sits passively quiet is too often praised as 
 being a "good" child. He is too often encouraged 
 to do this instead of to exercise his intellectual 
 muscles by a constant participation in a variety of 
 interesting movements, taken spontaneously. 
 
II 
 
 DR. MONTESSORI TO THE EESCUE— THE 
 UNDERLYING IDEA OF HER SYSTEM 
 
 It was with the echo in my ears of a great deal 
 of such clamor and unrest from both teachers and 
 parents that I went to Rome the winter of 1911-1912, 
 having for one of my objects the investigation of a 
 new system of education for very small children, said 
 to have been devised by an Italian woman. I 
 was in rather a sceptical frame of mind. There 
 have been in America a good many new " sys- 
 tems" of education which have come to very little. 
 Italy is notoriously behind the rest of the world 
 in her public schools. It seemed not likely that 
 America would have much to learn from a new 
 variety of Kindergarten established in Rome. Be- 
 fore I went to visit this new variety of infant- 
 school, I procured the book written on the sys- 
 tem by the woman-doctor who had founded it. 
 I found the volume in some ways rather hard 
 reading, written in difficult Italian, full of tech- 
 nical terms, medical facts of which I had been 
 ignorant, physiological pyschology and the nerv- 
 
 16 
 
THE UNDERLYING IDEA 17 
 
 ous reactions in the human brain. But in spite 
 of all these difficulties I was held as I have 
 never been held by the most absorbing novel, and 
 when I finally laid down the bulky volume, it was 
 with the certainty of having seen a great light. 
 
 Here was a doctor, who had begun with a 
 purely medical interest in children's brains, who 
 had grappled hand to hand with the heart-break- 
 ing problem of the education of mentally deficient 
 children and who, in that struggle, had discovered 
 certain laws about the intellectual tendencies and 
 intellectual activities of childhood in general. She 
 " discovered" them, as a scientist does discover 
 general laws, as Newton discovered the law of 
 gravity. He was not the first man who had ever 
 seen an apple drop to the ground. Everybody for 
 centuries had known that they fall thus, and had 
 been taking advantage in a fitful, irregular way 
 of this only half-consciously known information. 
 Newton ''discovered" no new thing. He formu- 
 lated the general underlying principles, involved 
 in phenomena already observed, he made that in- 
 formation accurate, definite, to be counted upon, 
 to be employed with certainty of the result, to be 
 used, as it has been used, in the exploration of 
 the solar system. 
 
 Dr. Montessori emerged from her laboratory 
 work with deficient children with scientific proofs 
 
18 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 of certain fundamental principles of children's 
 intellectual processes. And, being a scientist, she 
 did what few of us really can do, she believed in 
 facts scientifically proved. 
 
 Acts upon Facts Scientifically Proved. — 
 What were these facts? In essence nothing new, 
 nothing that we do not admit in theory, although 
 we do not have the courage to act upon them. 
 What is so startling about Dr. Montessori's atti- 
 tude towards education is the honest, scientist's 
 integrity of her logic. .She continually says, in 
 substance, "If that is the way children are made, 
 our business is to educate them accordingly." \ 
 
 One of the facts she rediscovered is the old 
 threadbare truism that every child is different 
 from every other child. We all knew that before. 
 The only difference between Dr. Montessori and 
 the rest of us is that we disregard this well- 
 known factor in the problem and that she takes 
 it fully into account. It is not surprising that she 
 does her educational sum with much more nearly 
 an approximation to the right answer, than our 
 wildly varying and always highly inaccurate re- 
 sults. 
 
 Dr. Montessori found that not only does every 
 child differ from every other child but, not being 
 a fixed and inanimate object, he is in a constant 
 state of flux, and differs from himself, from day 
 
THE UNDERLYING IDEA 19 
 
 to day, as lie grows. His attention, his memory, 
 his mental endurance, his intellectual interest and 
 curiosity, are not only unlike those of the child 
 next him in school, but will be tomorrow differ- 
 ent from what they are today. Then instead of 
 turning tail and running away (as most of our 
 educators do) from the tremendous problem in- 
 volved in adequately treating such complicated 
 little organisms, Dr. Montessori faced the situa- 
 tion squarely, accepting as every scientist does, the 
 odds given him by Mother Nature. It was evi- 
 dent to her that the usual " class recitation" and 
 "class lessons" were out of the question, since 
 they could at the best, possibly fit the needs of 
 only one child in the class. And yet it is obvi- 
 ously impossible, as the world is made up, to have 
 a teacher for every child. There was only one 
 way out — things must somehow be so organized 
 and arranged that, for most of the time, the child 
 can and shall teach himself. 
 
 The Underlying Idea. — And here Dr. Mon- 
 tessori found herself in happy accord with another 
 fundamental principle of the growth of childhood, 
 which she had discovered or rediscovered and 
 which may be said broadly to be the master idea 
 of her system. The central idea of the Montessori 
 system, on which every smallest bit of apparatus, 
 every detail of technic rests solidly, is a full recog- 
 
20 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 nition of the fact that no human being is educated 
 by anyone else. He must do it himself or it is 
 never done. The learner must do his own learn- 
 ing, and this granted, it follows naturally that the 
 less he is interfered with by arbitrary restraint 
 and vexatious, unnecessary rules, the more quickly, 
 easily and spontaneously he will learn. Everyone 
 who wishes to adopt her system, or to train chil- 
 dren according to her method, must learn con- 
 stantly to repeat to himself and to act upon, at 
 every moment, this maxim, "All growth must come 
 from a voluntaky action of the child himself." 
 
 The System Must Fit the Child. — In this 
 respect again Dr. Montessori took squarely the 
 stand that education must be made to fit the child 
 and the child not forced to fit a preconceived idea 
 of what education ought to be or do. She laid 
 down in the first place the principle that one of 
 the essentials of education is that children shall 
 get that individual attention they need so much, 
 by giving it to themselves, each child being his own 
 teacher. She now further stated as another essen- 
 tial element that education should be so organized 
 that the child shall ardently desire to teach him- 
 self and shall enjoy doing it more than anything 
 else. 
 
 To reduce then, to the barest outline (because 
 that is the most easily grasped and retained), this 
 
Children busy with the Cylindrical 
 Insets 
 
 The Dressing Frames are fascinating 
 tor small children 
 
 Learning Muscular Co-ordination by 
 means of the Metal Insets 
 
 The Blindfold Game with the Wooden 
 
 Insets — Developing the Muscular 
 
 Sense 
 
\ 
 
THE UNDERLYING IDEA 21 
 
 new system of training children, one can say that 
 it rests upon a full conviction of these three facts 
 about the nature of children: 
 
 First. — Children are all different from each 
 other, and hence need for their fullest development, 
 the greatest possible liberty for their individual- 
 ities to grow; and that, though of course there are 
 many points in common, they must not be treated 
 in the lump, but individually. 
 
 Second. — Children cannot, so to speak, learn 
 from the outside. That is, that the impulse to 
 learn must come from within their own minds. 
 There are absolutely no exceptions to this rule. 
 Children must wish to learn, or it is a physical 
 impossibility for them to do so. 
 
 Third. — Children are so made that, given proper 
 conditions, they prefer educating themselves to any 
 other occupation. 
 
Ill 
 
 AN ITALIAN CASA DEI BAMBINI— A DAY 
 WITH THE CHILDREN'S ACTIVITIES 
 
 What has been said thus far is almost certain 
 to have aroused in the minds of many readers the 
 question, "How in the world does Dr. Montessori 
 accomplish all this?" or, perhaps the more skep- 
 tical exclamation, "It can't be done, by Dr. Mon- 
 tessori or anyone else!" How can children teach 
 themselves? How can they learn without detailed 
 verbal instructions from a teacher? 
 
 How does a boy learn to climb an apple tree? 
 By being turned loose in company with the tree 
 at that period of his life when he feels a surging 
 natural impulse to climb trees. A boy of three 
 can play about the foot of an apple tree day after 
 day and no more think of climbing it than we of 
 walking the ridge pole of our house. A man of 
 twenty-one can play tennis, or plough, under the 
 tree's branches with a similar lack of monkey-like 
 desire to climb from branch to branch. But some- 
 where between those ages, there is a period in every 
 normal life when, if the opportunity is present, a 
 
 22 
 
AN ITALIAN CASA DEI BAMBINi 23 
 
 vast amount of muscular agility, strength and 
 accuracy are acquired, together with considerable 
 physical courage, some daring, some prudence, and 
 a fair amount of good judgment, all without the 
 slightest need either to force or persuade the child 
 to the acquisition of these desirable qualities. 
 
 The Puepose of the Montessori Devices and 
 Their Educational Value. — Now, for all intents 
 and purposes, the Montessori apparatus, so much 
 talked of, so scientifically and ingeniously devised, 
 is simply composed of supplementary apple trees. 
 It is made up of devices and inventions which are 
 intended, first, to stimulate the little child's natural 
 desire to act and learn through action; second, to 
 provide him with action which shall give him a 
 better control of his own body and will-power; and 
 third, which shall lead him naturally from a 
 simple action to a more difficult one. 
 
 Trains the Five Senses. — In the case of very 
 little children this is (as far as concerns the 
 formal Montessori apparatus sold) largely con- 
 nected with the training of the senses. The im- 
 portance of this detailed, direct education of the 
 five senses may not be at first apparent. But it 
 is evident that our five senses are our only means 
 of conveying information to our brains about the 
 external world which surrounds us, and it is equally 
 evident that to act wisely and surely in the world, 
 
24 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 the brain has need of the fullest and most accu- 
 rate information possible. Hence it is a foregone 
 conclusion (once we think of it at all) that the 
 education of all the senses of a child to rapidity, 
 agility and exactitude, is of great importance — not 
 at all for the sake of the information acquired at 
 the time by the child, but for the sake of the 
 five, finely accurate instruments which this educa- 
 tion puts under his control. 
 
 Moxtessobi Spirit Is the First Essential. — 
 Much has been written and said about the Mon- 
 tessori Didactic Apparatus, but before I begin on 
 a description of the apparatus, or of a Casa dei 
 Bambini, I wish to make this protest. The use 
 of her apparatus without an understanding of the 
 underlying principles and without the spirit that 
 animates all true Montessori work will result only 
 in confusion and disorder. The Montessori Didac- 
 tic Apparatus is a part of the system, but the 
 most vital element is the Montessori spirit. The 
 apparatus is immensely ingenious, it is wonder- 
 fully successful, it accomplishes its purpose with 
 great economy of effort, but the apparatus alone 
 is not enough. The mother on a desert island who 
 is dominated by Dr. Montessori 's love and 
 respect for the child would accomplish much more 
 without the formal apparatus than a mother who 
 uses it without the sympathy and understanding 
 
AN ITALIAN CASA DEI BAMBINI- 25 
 
 requisite for success. So, dear mother, do not 
 become discouraged if you cannot afford the 
 apparatus. Above all have faith and confidence 
 in your child, and your ability to put the Mon- 
 tessori spirit into the everyday affairs of the 
 child's home life. 
 
 The Casa dei Bambini. — If you wish to see a 
 typical Casa dei Bambini (which means Children's 
 Home) you are to imagine thirty children turned 
 loose, absolutely loose, in a big, airy room, fur- 
 nished with little chairs and tables, light enough 
 for the little ones to handle, with room outdoors, 
 close at hand, where the children may run and play 
 when they feel like it. You are to imagine a quiet, 
 gentle, alert, nearly always silent superintendent, 
 to whom all those little self -teachers turn for advice 
 in their educational career; a piano in one corner 
 of the room, to the music of which once in a while 
 those children who feel like it dance and play. 
 There are soft rugs on the floor, on which those 
 children who feel tired may lie down and rest when- 
 ever they like. On the walls there are pleasant pic- 
 tures of subjects suitable for little children. There 
 are window-boxes of plants, tended by the little 
 pupils; there are in one corner some little wash- 
 stands with small bowls and pitchers where the 
 children wash their own faces and hands, whenever 
 they are dirtied by their work or play. In fact, 
 
26 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 the room and its furnishings are exactly like what 
 every mother would like to give her own children 
 in her own home. The Casa dei Bambini is truly 
 a " Children's Home" — a place for self-reliant work 
 and contented play. Such a home centers and holds 
 within its walls the child's every interest, and how 
 completely and happily children are at home in it! 
 Feel a Responsibility. — The children learn to 
 feel, because they are allowed to, a real responsi- 
 bility for the condition of this, their very own home. 
 Before they begin the morning's work, the school- 
 room is cleaned by themselves, using tiny brooms 
 and dustpans, just the right size for their little 
 hands, and they make their own morning toilets 
 neatly and cheerfully at the little washstands. They 
 ail seem like brothers and sisters of one big fam- 
 ily, living the happiest and sanest of family lives 
 together in one big, well-furnished nursery. They 
 forms groups of two or three, over some difficult 
 problem; or four or five in a game with some part 
 of the apparatus which needs a number of children 
 together; or ten or twelve in a ring-around-the-rosy 
 game to the music of the piano. Out in the play- 
 ground, bright with flowers and plants of their 
 own tending, there are always some children who 
 are racing pbout in an Italian version of "black- 
 man" or "blindman's buff." ISTo one makes the 
 slightest effort to induce them to stop playing in 
 
AN ITALIAN CASA DEI BAMBINI 27 
 
 order to come and learn their letters or the sim- 
 pler processes of arithmetic. They do so of their 
 very own accord. It has been found, first, that 
 although they are free to do so if they wish, they 
 no more wish to spend all their time in playing 
 children's games than workers in a candy factory 
 desire to consume chocolate drops all the time. 
 
 Value of Free- Will Over Enforced Atten- 
 tion. — The second discovery is of even greater 
 importance than the first; is in fact of such vital 
 importance that it cannot be too often stated and 
 emphasized in any writing about this system. This 
 is the discovery that one moment of real attention, 
 given of the child's own free will, with actual vivify- 
 ing interest back of it, is worth more educationally 
 than hours of enforced listening to a teacher teach. 
 Such a moment of real attention is worth more 
 because it is worth everything, while the enforced 
 listening to teaching is worth nothing. 
 
 Luncheon in the Casa dei Bambini. — The chil- 
 dren, as a rule, busy themselves happily with the 
 different parts of the apparatus most of the morn- 
 ing. Towards noon, preparations for luncheon begin. 
 The children take turns in doing this work, four 
 or five being charged every day with the responsi- 
 bility of setting the tables, bringing in the soup 
 tureens, and serving their little mates. There is 
 no better description of this most interesting and 
 
28 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 valuable part of the routine of the day than the 
 passage in Dr. Montessori's own book, The Mon- 
 tessori Method, page 348: "Any one who has 
 watched them setting the table must have passed 
 from one surprise to another. Little four-year-old 
 waiters take the knives and forks and spoons and 
 distribute them to the different places; they carry 
 trays holding as many as five water glasses, and 
 finally they go from table to table, carrying tureens 
 full of hot soup. Not a mistake is made, not a 
 glass is broken, not a drop of soup is spilled. All 
 during the meal, unobtrusive little waiters watch 
 the table assiduously; not a child empties his soup- 
 plate without being offered more; if he is ready 
 for the next course, a waiter briskly carries off his 
 soup-plate. Not a child is forced to ask for more 
 soup, or to announce that he has finished. 
 
 "Remembering the usual condition of four-year- 
 old children, who cry, who break whatever they 
 touch, who need to be waited on, everyone is deeply 
 moved by the sight I have just described, which 
 evidently results from the development of energies 
 deeply latent in the human soul. I have often 
 seen spectators moved to tears at this banquet of 
 little ones." 
 
 Exercise Their Owjt Choice. — After lunch, the 
 children again choose freely their own occupations. 
 Some run out to play on the playground; some 
 
AN ITALIAN CASA DEI BAMBINI 29 
 
 water the plants under their especial care ; some 
 take naps as long as they like. By far the greater 
 number, however, return to the Montessori appa- 
 ratus and occupy themselves with that fascinating 
 material until it is time for them to go back to 
 their parents' homes — for they consider the school- 
 room as their own home. And well they may, for 
 everything in it is devised scientifically, carefully, 
 ingeniously and devotedly to the comfort, profit, enjoy- 
 ment and self-education of children from three to 
 seven. That is certainly not true of the average 
 home in Italy or America, but if it were, how much 
 more interesting to the child and more helpful would 
 be the environments of the home! 
 
IV 
 
 USE OF THE APPARATUS WITH COMPRE- 
 HENSIVE AND PRACTICAL DIRECTIONS 
 TO THE MOTHER OR TEACHER 
 
 We in America who have children between the 
 ages of two and seven can not as yet send our chil- 
 dren to a Casa dei Bambini. Therefore, if we 
 wish our children to profit by the great work of 
 Dr. Montessori, we must do the next best- thing, 
 and give them the Montessori training in our own 
 homes. The fact that we have only the children of 
 our own home to deal with, as compared to the 
 thirty in the Casa dei Bambini should not lessen 
 the sense of responsibility or the diligence with 
 which we strive to make daily application of the 
 Montessori principles. The mother has some advan- 
 tages which the superintendent of the Montessori 
 schoolroom does not have. She has the children 
 constantly with her, and she can, if she will, turn 
 into a Montessori exercise almost everything the 
 child does in the course of his waking hours. 
 These valuable and constantly present opportunities 
 for supplementary Montessori work in ordinary home 
 
m: 
 
 Color Spools 
 
© m 
 
 © m 
 
 Wk&utfi&kmd 
 
 
 § 1 
 
°c 
 
 I 
 
 
 SI 
 
 "3 -s' 
 
 (55 § 
 
 h-i 1 
 
 H 
 
IIL 
 
 00 w 
 
 The Tower 
 
 (To be used in Exercise Four) 
 
IV. 
 
 «■ 
 
 Sandpaper Boards 
 
 (To be used in Exercises Seven and Eight) 
 

 ;■" 
 
 Color Boxes 
 
 (To be used in Exercises Sixteen and Seventeen) 
 
 
 m 
 
 
VI. 
 
VII. 
 
 □□□□□□ 
 
 H ra H ra ra H 
 
 ■oloioioiof 
 
 □ nnnnn 
 
 o 
 
 Plane Geometric Forms 
 
 (To be used in Exercise Thirtee 
 
VIII. 
 
 ■■ Q : 4i- 
 
 
 Part of Movable Alphabet 
 
 (To be used in Exercise Nineteen) 
 
 Computing Boxes 
 
 (To be used in Exercises Twenty-three and Twenty-four) 
 
USE OF THE APPARATUS 31 
 
 life will be touched upon as the regular apparatus 
 is described and explained in the following lessons. 
 But this treatment must be considered only sug- 
 gestive. Every mother with any of the usual 
 American adaptability and ingenuity can and will 
 be able, after reading these hints, to devise a hun- 
 dred new exercises for her children — exercises which 
 will develop the typically Montessori qualities of 
 muscular accuracy, bodily poise, mental ability, and 
 moral responsibility. 
 
 Let us suppose that the box containing the Mon- 
 tessori apparatus comes into the home when the 
 three-year-old child for whom it is intended is 
 asleep. The mother takes her time to look over 
 the large collection of queer-looking objects and, 
 if she is wise, puts away, for the present, every- 
 thing but the simplest of the Buttoning Frames and 
 the three sets of Solid Geometric Insets. 
 
 EXERCISE ONE 
 TO FIX THE CHILD'S ATTENTION ON SIZE AND FOEM 
 
 Solid Geometrical Insets. — These comprise three 
 series of wooden cylinders set in corresponding holes 
 in a thick, smoothly planed board. There are ten 
 cylinders to each of the three series. In the first, 
 the height of the cylinders is constant and the diam- 
 eter varies; in the second series, the diameter is 
 constant and the height varies; in the third series, 
 
32 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 the cylindrical form alone is constant, height and 
 diameter varying. With these insets, the child, work- 
 ing independently, learns to discriminate objects 
 according to thickness, height and size, and the 
 material used controls the error. 
 
 When the child wakes up, he is told there are 
 some new playthings in the house, and one of the 
 Solid Geometric Series is shown him. As a rule, 
 he needs no further supervision in the use of this 
 piece of apparatus, since it is self-corrective. If 
 he gets a small cylinder in the big hole, when he 
 comes to the small hole, the big cylinder will not 
 go in it, and he is forced to look back to correct 
 his own mistake. Here, as in the use of all the 
 Montessori apparatus, it is well to remember that 
 the best thing one can do for the child is to let 
 him alone as much as possible. "Hands off!" is 
 the motto for adults in adopting the Montessori 
 system for a child. The important thing is not 
 that the cylinders shall all be put back in the right 
 holes, but that the child shall do it himself! Any 
 ordinarily active, right-minded baby of three will 
 fight for this right himself, pushing away help and 
 crying "Let me," and the adults should religiously 
 respect this desire to begin a life of self-independ- 
 ence. And yet, of course, adult brains can often 
 devise some method of using the apparatus which 
 will make the process of learning self-independence 
 
USE OF THE APPARATUS 33 
 
 easier for the child. One of the discoveries made 
 by Dr. Montessori is that the sense of touch is 
 very much more developed in little children than 
 the sense of sight; that is, that they can tell more 
 about an object after they have handled it than 
 if they have merely looked at it. So that in the 
 case of the solid geometric insets, it is well to explain 
 to a child who has difficulty in getting the cylinders 
 back in the right hole that if he holds a cylinder by 
 the little knob with the fingers of his left hand 
 and passes the forefinger of his right hand around 
 the base of it, and then around the opening into 
 which he thinks it ought to fit, that he will prob- 
 ably be more accurate than if he merely looks at 
 the two objects. 
 
 It is well that the mother should understand just 
 why the child should be interested in these exer- 
 cises. There are two fundamental traits of child- 
 hood involved: first, any normal child takes a great 
 interest in putting objects in rows; second, any 
 child is delighted when he can put an object into 
 an opening. Combining these two traits of child- 
 hood, we have a fascinating educational device. The 
 child is not only happily employed but he is learn- 
 ing something that is of value. He is learning 
 to discriminate between different objects. Although 
 he does it unconsciously, he is forming an idea of 
 spacial relations. He is developing concentration 
 
34 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 because this play, fascinating as it is, requires con- 
 centration. When he discriminates between the 
 different cylinders, he must necessarily form primi- 
 tive judgments. This brief description will, I hope, 
 give you some idea of the educational value of these 
 first simple exercises. 
 
 When the child can successfully put the various 
 cylinders in their respective openings, the exercises 
 can be made more complex by giving all the cylin- 
 ders to the child and only one of the bases. This 
 requires a greater discrimination, making the exer- 
 cise more complex. The cylinders can also be used 
 a little later in teaching nomenclature, to show the 
 difference between thick and thin, thicker and thin- 
 ner, high and low, higher and lower, etc. 
 
 After he has mastered the simpler exercises, the 
 child may be blindfolded or, looking in another 
 direction, place the various cylinders into the open- 
 ings. These exercises bring into play the tactile 
 and muscular senses, both of which are very acute 
 in small children. Since the child delights to feel 
 of objects, it will not be long until he will take a 
 great interest in the game of "seeing with his 
 fingers." These sets of cylinders are perhaps the 
 simplest of all the equipment and at the same time 
 I might say they have proved the most fascinating 
 for small children. 
 
 The Tracing of Forms, "The Beginnings" of 
 
USE OF THE APPARATUS 35 
 
 Writing. — The child should be cautioned (and his 
 mother should take pains about this in all Mon- 
 tessori exercises) to make the motions always from 
 the left to the right, in the directions in which the 
 writing is done, for these exercises, unlikely as 
 it seems, are the beginnings of writing and reading. 
 Then he should be left to "play" with this new toy, 
 as long as his interest lasts, which will vary greatly 
 according to the degree of development reached, the 
 temperament of the child, and even his state of 
 health. When he is perfectly well and rested and 
 not hungry, he can do much better work than other- 
 wise^ — very much like the rest of us! His attention 
 to the exercise must, of course, be spontaneous, 
 brought about by the interest of the task given, 
 and if the task does not happen to interest that 
 particular child at that particular moment, nothing 
 can be gained by forcing him or even coaxing him 
 to go on with it. He will return to it another day, 
 or perhaps even an hour later, of his own accord. 
 
 EXERCISE TWO 
 FOE CO-ORDINATING MOVEMENTS OF THE FINGERS 
 
 The Buttoning or Dressing Frames. — There 
 are eight of the dressing or buttoning frames. Any 
 one or more of these can be used effectively with- 
 out association with the others. On six wooden 
 frames are mounted six pieces of cloth of varying 
 
36 THE MONTESSOEI MANUAL 
 
 textures, to be joined by means of large buttons 
 and buttonholes, automatic fasteners, small buttons 
 and buttonholes, hooks and eyes, colored ribbons for 
 bow-tying, and lacing through eyelets. The remain- 
 ing two frames are mounted with leather pieces, 
 one of which simulates shoe lacing and the other 
 shoe buttoning, the latter involving the use of the 
 button hook. These exercises are for the develop- 
 ment of co-ordinate movements of the fingers. The 
 child is taught to dress himself without his really 
 knowing that a lesson is being taught him, and 
 when the frames are mastered, his first desire is 
 to make a practical application of his new ability. 
 The Buttoning Frame, or the frame with "hooks 
 and eyes," should be brought out first, and the 
 method of fastening and unfastening explained in 
 the usual Montessori way; that is, as briefly as 
 possible. It is often best not to say anything, but 
 merely to go through the exercises one's self, unbut- 
 toning or unhooking the cloth, buttoning or hook- 
 ing it up again, and handing the frame to the child. 
 In most cases he at once sets to work, and even 
 though his first efforts seem to the observing mother 
 incredibly clumsy and slow, she must keep her 
 hands off, and let him work out his own problems. 
 The only rule should be that if he does not wish 
 to play with the apparatus, or when he grows tired 
 of its use, he should put it away; and for that pur- 
 
USE OF THE APPARATUS 37 
 
 pose it is very essential that there should be a 
 well defined place, which the child can easily reach, 
 for every one of his belongings — not only for the 
 Montessori apparatus, but for his other toys and 
 for his clothing. The hooks should be low, so that 
 little arms can reach them, and the drawers where 
 clothing is put away should be easy to open and 
 shut. Three years is none too young to begin the 
 habit of order, which, like so many other good 
 habits, may be acquired painlessly at an early age, 
 although so nearly impossible to inculcate after the 
 bad habits have become fixed. The exercises with 
 the dressing frames are not necessarily for the 
 developing of the different senses. The primary 
 object is to develop the muscular co-ordination to 
 strengthen the child's little fingers. These materials 
 carry out Dr. Montessori 's ideas of simplicity, self- 
 correction and general attractiveness. They are so 
 simple that the child at once understands the mean- 
 ing of the game, and in working with these various 
 materials his little fingers and hands are so strength- 
 ened that he may successfully take up more complex 
 and difficult work. Of course, one of the incidents 
 of this work is that he learns to dress and undress 
 himself. This, it should be remembered, is not 
 the primary factor that Dr. Montessori has in mind. 
 It is incidental to the general muscular co-ordination 
 that is effected. 
 
38 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 EXERCISE THREE 
 
 SUPPLEMENTARY EXERCISES TEACHING THE PRACTICAL 
 
 APPLICATION OF KNOWLEDGE GAINED WITH 
 
 THE APPARATUS 
 
 One obvious result sought in all these exercises 
 is the beginning in the child's mind of the habit 
 of concentration to the task in hand. The insets 
 are primarily intended, as already stated, to teach 
 the child to distinguish between differences in dimen- 
 sion and form, and this can be taught by supple- 
 mentary exercises in almost any room of the house. 
 
 First. — In the dining-room he can be given a 
 pile of spoons of differing size, teaspoons, table- 
 spoons, soup-spoons, coffee-spoons, etc., and the 
 suggestion made to him that it would be fun to 
 separate them into piles according to their sizes. 
 In most cases, this impromptu Montessori exercise 
 can be depended upon to amuse the child for an 
 astonishingly long period, and it is, of course, excel- 
 lent training for his capacity to distinguish accu- 
 rately between objects similar but of differing size. 
 In the kitchen, a pile of pans and covers will afford 
 a great deal of valuable practice in distinguishing 
 which cover will fit which pan. 
 
 Second. — Out of doors, a pile of stones of differ- 
 ing sizes can be divided into several piles of the 
 same size. Most mothers will be surprised at the 
 
Exercising the sense of touch combined with muscular 
 sense in learning the form ol letters 
 
 Working with the Montessori Movable Alphabet 
 
USE OF THE APPARATUS 39 
 
 vast and inextinguishable interest taken in such 
 simple exercises by the average healthy child of 
 three or over. The gain in accuracy of eye and 
 brain is too obvious to need discussion. 
 
 Third. — The buttoning frames are intended first 
 of all to teach the child to use his hands and fingers 
 accurately and well, and next to enable him to dress 
 himself as far as may be. This is very important, 
 for the first thing to be done for a little child is 
 to release him as quickly as possible from the prison 
 of babyishness — to make it possible for him to take 
 care of himself, and not to depend upon the serv- 
 ices of others. As his clothes are nearly always 
 fastened with buttons, it is essential that consider- 
 able time be devoted to teaching him how to manage 
 these, or, rather, that he shall be allowed to take 
 the time necessary to learn this. For he has a 
 natural fund of desire to manage himself which 
 makes him eager to learn. The buttoning frames, 
 being of cloth tightly stretched on wood, are easier 
 for him to manage than the buttons on his own 
 clothes, although as soon as he begins to try to 
 button his own coats and waists, he should be 
 allowed all the time he needs for his first clumsy 
 and ineffectual attempts. Eemember, he should be 
 allowed all the time he needs — not all the help he 
 needs I For if he is often helped, he will fall into 
 the vicious, invalid's habit of waiting for other 
 
40 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 people to serve him. Care should be taken that 
 the buttons on his clothes are large and easily 
 grasped by his little wandering fingers, and that, 
 if possible, they should be put on in positions where 
 he can get at them without too much wriggling and 
 twisting. This is more important by far than that 
 they should be handsome, or set on according to 
 the latest fashion. 
 
 Fourth. — In addition to the buttons and hooks 
 on his own clothes, it is a good idea to give him 
 other things which fasten in that way; and a large 
 doll which can wear his own clothes is a very good 
 aid at this stage of his development. The doll is 
 most easily made and most serviceable, constructed 
 of cloth and stuffed. As it can wear the clothes of 
 the child, he has a large wardrobe ready at hand 
 to play with, and he can manage it much better 
 than the usual doll's clothes with minute buttons 
 and buttonholes, which are hard even for adult 
 fingers. It is well to remember, here and always, 
 that, as a rule, children must have large objects 
 to deal with, rather than small, if their eyesight is 
 to be preserved without injury. 
 
 Fifth. — The lace and ribbon frames are more 
 difficult to use and are, of course, to be held back 
 until the child is older, perhaps four or five. From 
 time to time, they should be brought out and a 
 simple experiment made of the child's capacity to 
 
USE OF THE APPARATUS 41 
 
 deal with it. If he does not at once show interest 
 in the problem of bow-knots and laces, and more 
 of a capacity to struggle with the construction of 
 them than on the last trial, the frame should be 
 taken away, without comment, and not tried again 
 until more progress has been made in the other 
 exercises. It must be remembered, as a general rule 
 for the use of the Montessori exercises, and in gen- 
 eral in the training of little children, that no pro- 
 longed attempt should ever be made to coax them 
 to continue an exercise which does not interest them. 
 If they show no spontaneous interest, they are not 
 ready for it, and time is only wasted by any attempt 
 to force their inclination. When they are ready, 
 they can learn in ten minutes what three hours of 
 dreary enforced practice was not able to teach them. 
 
 EXERCISE FOUR 
 
 EXERCISES FOUR, FIVE AND SIX ARE ALSO FOR THE FUR- 
 THER CULTIVATION OF THE CHILD'S VISUAL 
 PERCEPTION OF DIFFERENCE IN 
 DIMENSION AND FORM 
 
 The Block Tower. — After the child has had a 
 day or so of practice with the Geometric Insets and 
 Buttoning Frames, allowing him to take them up 
 and lay them down at will, it is time to bring 
 out the blocks composing the Tower. The Tower 
 
42 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 is a series of ten wooden cubes, decreasing in 
 size. Almost every nursery possesses such blocks, 
 but few mothers are aware of their educational 
 value or of the distinctive use to which blocks of 
 graduated size should be put. Their use should not 
 be confused with that of the ordinary " building 
 blocks," — cube blocks of unvarying size. With the 
 Tower blocks there are definite problems of classi- 
 fication and discrimination to be solved, and to get 
 the benefit of them, the child must use them in the 
 one correct way. 
 
 The mother builds up the Tower before the 
 child's eyes, placing the largest block first, then the 
 next smaller one, and so on down to the tiny little 
 cube at the top. Then she knocks it all down, and if 
 her child is the average child, he needs no more 
 incentive to duplicate the performance and to begin 
 to educate himself as to graduations of size. When 
 he begins to construct the Tower himself, the dim- 
 cult thing for the mother to do is to avoid giving 
 him elaborate instructions: "No, no, Jimmy — not 
 that one — that's not the next size — don't you see 
 the one by your hand is bigger?" etc., etc., etc. The 
 only good Jimmy can get of this exercise is by learn- 
 ing to see for himself which is the bigger block, 
 and to do this his mother must let him alone. She 
 need not be surprised if he makes one odd mistake 
 continually, even after he has learned quite deftly 
 
USE OF THE APPARATUS 43 
 
 to construct the Tower. A great many children find 
 it difficult to begin the Tower with the biggest block. 
 They begin it with the next biggest, and, when they 
 have finished, find that they cannot place the largest 
 one without tearing down the whole structure. The 
 psychological processes involved in this mistake are 
 too complicated to explain here. I mention it, lest 
 some anxious mother should think her own three- 
 year-old especially deficient in the capacity to dis- 
 tinguish between sizes. 
 
 One exercise that can be profitably carried out 
 is to give the Tower to the child and have him 
 carry it, let us say, from one part of the room to 
 another. In all probability, his first attempt will 
 be far from successful. Let him take his own time 
 in the rebuilding of it, and then make another 
 attempt. Finally, he will be able to carry it very 
 successfully from one part of the room to another, 
 thus showing the self-control that is developed. 
 Many mothers have also found that the child is 
 interested in the blindfold exercises with the Tower. 
 This exercise merely affords another means of devel- 
 oping the different senses. 
 
 EXERCISE FIVE 
 
 Broad Staie. — After the Tower, the next exer- 
 cise is the Broad Stair. It is a set of ten rectangu- 
 lar wooden blocks, decreasing in height and width, 
 
44 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 length only being constant. This is another of the 
 visual perception exercises. Here it may be well 
 to mention that when a new exercise is given a child, 
 the older ones are by no means taken away. They 
 are left in the nursery, where he can get at them 
 himself whenever he wishes to, and the new ones 
 simply added to the store of his riches. Often, when 
 the more elaborate exercises are quite mastered, a 
 child will take pleasure in returning for a time 
 to the simpler old friends with which he began. He 
 should be allowed to do this quite as he wishes, his 
 own instinct being a sure and accurate guide to 
 what is best for him in this respect. He is doing 
 what we all like to do occasionally — he is " review- 
 ing" what he has learned, and making sure of his 
 grasp on something which he has not thought of 
 for some time. 
 
 The Broad Stair is brought out in the same quiet 
 manner with which the child has been introduced 
 to his other Montessori " playthings." The mother 
 arranges the blocks in regular order starting either 
 with the biggest or the smallest, and laying the 
 others side by side until a regular stair is con- 
 structed. Then she mixes the blocks up, and goes 
 away. The child, if he is ready for this exercise, 
 at once takes it up, and in struggling to repeat his 
 mother's feat, constructs the stair, intellectually as 
 well as physically, and learns a new variety of 
 
USE OF THE APPARATUS 45 
 
 dimension. Since all these blocks are the same 
 length, and only differ in height and thickness, his 
 problem is one degree more difficult than in the 
 construction of the Tower. 
 
 It should be remembered about these blocks, as 
 about all Montessori apparatus, that they should be 
 used for the purpose for which they are intended 
 and for no other. The child should always have, in 
 addition, an ordinary set of plain building blocks, 
 with which he can play in any way he pleases, and 
 if he begins to "make houses, " etc., with his Mon- 
 tessori blocks, his little mind, incapable of more 
 than one idea at a time, should be redirected to the 
 regular exercise involving the dimensions of these 
 
 blocks. 
 
 EXERCISE SIX 
 
 The Long Stair. — After the Tower and the 
 Stair comes the third set of blocks, or rods, called 
 the Long Stair. This is the most important of the 
 three sets, as it is the foundation for instruction 
 in arithmetic. With this set of short rectangular 
 rods, the child learns, as he grows older, a number 
 of the simpler processes of numeration. At first 
 they are presented to the child just as a series of 
 rods differing in length, the smallest one being one- 
 tenth of the length of the longest one. The mother 
 builds up the series, having the child notice that 
 all the rods are red on one end, and that the stairs 
 
46 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 have a regular number of red and blue spaces from 
 one to ten, or from the bottom to the top of the 
 stairs. Then the series is knocked over, the rods 
 mixed up, and the child left to put it together again 
 himself. Children who cannot definitely count can 
 often manage this series, and it is the greatest pleas- 
 ure for the child who has just learned to count 
 to be able to verify his numbers in this concrete 
 way. For the present, this is all that is done with 
 the Long Stair, but as the child progresses and 
 develops, it will be found one of the most valuable 
 parts of the apparatus, because the rods can be 
 combined in many different ways, and illustrate in 
 the plainest and most unmistakable manner many 
 of the simpler processes of mathematics — addition, 
 subtraction, etc. But this all comes later, and after 
 the child has mastered other of the apparatus. Per- 
 haps the mother will ask why Dr. Montessori uses 
 ten blocks for each series, or, in short, what is the 
 reason for these series. The child learns by com- 
 parisons, contrasts and classifications, just as the 
 adult does. It is much easier for him to compre- 
 hend the different dimensions when he has the means 
 of comparing blocks with others which vary in size. 
 In short, the child understands the relation between 
 the different blocks when presented in this manner. 
 Order of Exercises to Be Modified According 
 to Circumstances. — It is not desirable that we give 
 
USE OP THE APPARATUS 47 
 
 directions for the exact use and the order of suc- 
 cession of the remainder of the apparatus. Chil- 
 dren differ so widely that the mother will be forced 
 to depend somewhat on her own judgment and inti- 
 mate knowledge of the child. She will have grasped 
 by this time the purpose of the exercises with the 
 Montessori apparatus, which is to give the child 
 the fullest possible control over his own body and 
 will-power. The order of exercises as hereafter 
 indicated is to be followed with any ordinary child, 
 but this must be modified according to circumstances. 
 
 EXERCISE SEVEN 
 DEVELOPING THE SENSE OF TOUCH 
 
 ;Sandpapek Boaed Number One. — As a rule, the 
 next piece of apparatus to be taken up is the Sand- 
 paper Board, a small board, one-half of which is 
 smooth and the other half covered with sandpaper. 
 This fixes the child's attention on the difference 
 between surfaces. Sometimes this is one of the very 
 first apparatus to be used, as a distinction between 
 rough and smooth is apt to be one which arouses 
 the interest of a very little child. His mother takes 
 the board in her lap, or lays it on the child's 
 small table, and draws the little finger-tips over the 
 smoothly planed board, saying at the same time, 
 " smooth, smooth." Then she draws the finger-tips 
 
48 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 (always from left to right) over the rough sand- 
 paper, saying, " rough, rough.'' The child very soon 
 associates the sound with the sensation, to which 
 his finger-tips are more alive than are deadened 
 adult fingers, and says himself, as he touches the two 
 surfaces, " smooth, smooth — rough, rough." After 
 this distinction has been thoroughly learned (it may 
 take only one lesson, or it may take two or three 
 days), it is a good plan to try to see if he can make 
 the distinction accurately when he is not looking at 
 the board, purely by the sense of touch. The Italian 
 children are always blindfolded for this exercise, 
 and seem to enjoy it, but the American children 
 with whom I have had experience have preferred 
 merely to look away, up at the ceiling. The finger- 
 tips should then be passed, always with the utmost 
 delicacy and with the lightest possible touch, over 
 the two surfaces, and the child asked to give the 
 right name to what he is touching. At the first 
 sign of mental fatigue or confusion, this exercise 
 should be discontinued, although it may be taken 
 up again after a half -hour's rest and change of 
 occupation. The child's fingers should always be 
 trained from left to right. If the child from the 
 very beginning is directed to trace from left to 
 right, he has effected the first simple muscular 
 co-ordination that he will use a little later in writ- 
 ing, as we always write from left to right. In all 
 
USE OF THE APPARATUS 49 
 
 probability, the child will enjoy touching the smooth 
 surface very much, and it is interesting to note the 
 change of expression on his face as he changes from 
 the smooth to the rough. 
 
 EXERCISE EIGHT 
 
 Sandpaper Board Number Two. — When this 
 simpler of the sandpaper boards has been mastered, 
 the child may go to the next form, in which the 
 sandpaper is arranged in alternate strips on the 
 smoothly planed board. This is, of course, more 
 complicated, and the blindfolded child may soon 
 "lose his head" and not be able to distinguish accu- 
 rately between the sensations. He should be encour- 
 aged to take plenty of time, and to allow his finger- 
 tips to play freely across the surface. When he 
 can tell quickly, accurately, and without mental 
 fatigue, whether he is touching a rough or smooth 
 strip, the beginning of the child's education of his 
 tactile sense is well made. He has taken the first 
 step, which counts so much, and will go on steadily 
 to more complicated conquests. In this exercise, 
 the child is also learning to follow a raised surface 
 with his little fingers. This is of great value to 
 him as a preliminary to the sandpaper letters. After 
 he has mastered this simple exercise, he has one of 
 the first requisites necessary for successful work 
 with the sandpaper letters. 
 
50 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 EXERCISE NINE 
 
 FOR THE FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD 'S 
 TACTILE SENSE 
 
 In the formal Montessori apparatus, the small 
 cabinet containing seven drawers is filled with 
 various fabrics. These fabrics consist of two pieces 
 of the following materials: velvet, silk, wool, fine 
 and coarse linen, and fine and coarse cotton. It is 
 very important that absolutely pure fabrics should 
 be used for these first exercises; in short, the mother 
 should be quite sure that the linen she is using is 
 not partly cotton. Of course, if the regular Mon- 
 tessori apparatus is used, all of these precautions 
 are provided for. These can be supplemented by 
 any ragbag, and from the infinitely diversified fab- 
 rics used in the furnishing of any home. When 
 this " playing" with fabrics is first begun, the child 
 is allowed to handle the different pieces of cloth, 
 and his attention is called to the difference in their 
 texture. He is told their names, one or two at a 
 time, the mother taking the greatest pains to pro- 
 nounce the words clearly, distinctly, and slowly. 
 When he has learned to distinguish them by look- 
 ing at them, the next step, as with the sandpaper 
 boards, is to distinguish them by the sense of touch 
 only. The child can be blindfolded, or can look 
 up at the ceiling, and, sitting in front of a mixed-up 
 
USE OF THE APPARATUS 51 
 
 pile of the pieces, takes them up one at a time, pro- 
 nouncing their names. When he has done this 
 enough times so that he is quite sure of himself 
 (usually after a week of playing with the pieces 
 at intervals), he can go on to some of the fascinating 
 " games" to be played with them. If there are other 
 children in the family, the playing of " games" is 
 easier, but even for an only child they are possible. 
 
 Supplementary Exeecises and Games Involv- 
 ing the Sense of Touch. — First. — The pieces are 
 divided into two piles, each having the same number 
 of pieces of the same fabrics. Then the mother 
 picks out a piece of velvet, without naming it, asks 
 the child if he can find a piece like it in his pile 
 (of course, without looking). This is always pro- 
 ductive of much excited fumbling in the pieces, and 
 much delicate fingering of them by sensitive little 
 finger-tips, and finally much triumph when the 
 matching bit of velvet is discovered. It may be 
 said in passing that it is usually well to begin with 
 either velvet or silk, as those fabrics are so markedly 
 different from others that the problem is easier for 
 a beginner. If two children play this "game," the 
 victor is the one who first finds the piece of velvet 
 without looking at his pile. 
 
 Second. — The mother's ingenuity can devise many 
 other variations on this game, and can see to it 
 that the child goes on observing the fabrics used in 
 
52 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 different parts of the house, the materials of which 
 his own dresses are made, the stuff used in uphol- 
 stery, table linen, curtains, etc. He can also be 
 told the names of the different materials used in 
 building a house — wood, iron, tin, glass, stone, and 
 brick; and the materials of cooking utensils — china, 
 tin, copper, etc. There is an infinite variety of 
 material in the humblest home which can be the 
 most valuable educational apparatus for the well- 
 trained child, even in quite early childhood. Once 
 the child's interest in this problem is aroused, he 
 will in most cases go on educating himself, and all 
 the parent needs to do is to have the patience 
 necessary to answer innumerable questions. 
 
 Third. — Games with Balls, Squares, Triangles, 
 etc. — Another "game" for developing the sense of 
 touch with materials other than fabrics is played 
 in the Casa dei Bambini with solid wooden geo- 
 metric forms of differing shapes — balls, squares, 
 triangles, etc. The child is blindfolded, and pulls 
 these things, one at a time, out of a bag, identifying 
 them solely by fingering them over. In the home 
 this can be " played" with any material at hand 
 with which the child is familiar. He can be blind- 
 folded and try to identify objects in a miscellaneous 
 heap on the table before him, consisting of toy 
 animals, spoons, forks, brushes, combs, dolls, trays — 
 anything in the room which will not hurt him, and 
 
USE OF THE APPARATUS 53 
 
 is not breakable. Very little children always expe- 
 rience the greatest joy in thus proving that they 
 can see "with their fingers," and learn to receive 
 extremely accurate impressions through their sensi- 
 tive and cultivated little finger-tips. 
 
 EXERCISE TEN 
 TRAINING THE SENSE OF HEARING 
 
 Sound Boxes. — But the sense of touch is not 
 the only one of the child's five senses which can 
 be improved by direct training. The sense of hear- 
 ing is greatly developed and made more serviceable 
 for after years, if given reasonable practice. The 
 Montessori apparatus provides the wooden Sound 
 Boxes, filled with different substances — sand, gravel, 
 flaxseed, stones, etc., which give out sounds differing 
 in quality and loudness, when shaken. The child's 
 attention can be thus fixed, for the first time, on 
 a definite attempt to distinguish between loud and 
 low noises, as he shakes these little boxes close to 
 his ear, and attempts to arrange them in order 
 according to their degree of noise. 
 
 In all probability, the child has heard noises of 
 this character, but he has not had an opportunity 
 to compare or to contrast such noises. This exercise 
 affords an opportunity for such discrimination. As 
 a rule, the children take a great deal of interest 
 
54 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 in this simple exercise and they show a marked 
 difference in their ability to discriminate between 
 the various substances. 
 
 Supplementary Exercises and "Games." — But 
 this simple exercise needs to be supplemented by 
 other "games" which fix the attention on sounds. 
 These can be devised most easily with "hide-and- 
 seek" games. The mother hides and blows very 
 softly a little horn, by means of which the child 
 traces her; or she calls the child's name in the 
 lowest possible whispers, as he, blindfolded, tries 
 to locate her in the room by his hearing. Any of 
 the common children's games, "blindman's buff," 
 "still-pond-no-more-moving," etc., played with a 
 blindfold, are excellent exercises for the same pur- 
 pose of sharpening the hearing and training the, 
 child to receive accurate impressions through his 
 ears. 
 
 Out of doors, long-distance calling may be used 
 for this purpose, to accustom the child to determine 
 the direction from which any noise comes. 
 
 As to musical sounds, most children who are 
 young enough for this Montessori training are too 
 young to distinguish pitch at all accurately. Of 
 music they receive practically nothing but rhythm, 
 although they are fond of marching to a tune which 
 has strongly marked time, and this is a good exer- 
 cise for them, in its place. 
 
A spontaneous 
 writing lesson. These 
 children have reach- 
 ed the point where, 
 as Montessori says, 
 they "explode into 
 writing." 
 
 
 % 
 
 ■ I-.--: ; 
 
 '* 
 X 
 
 Montessori Long Stair Game 
 
' 
 
USE OF THE APPARATUS 55 
 
 EXERCISE ELEVEN 
 
 PREPAEATOEY EXEECISE FOE TEACHING THE CHILD TO 
 WEITE 
 
 Plane Geometeic Insets. — Very soon after the 
 child's first introduction to the Montessori appa- 
 ratus, he can begin his use of the Plane Geometric 
 Insets. These sets consist of a six-drawer cabinet, 
 thirty-six geometrical insets, and a pattern in an 
 adjustable frame, making possible any desired com- 
 bination of forms. The insets are made of pieces of 
 smooth wood, painted blue, cut in different shapes, 
 and with a little knob-like handle in the center. 
 These insets fit into holes or openings cut in a 
 rectangular natural colored piece of wood. The 
 first of the series of six drawers contains insets of 
 strongly contrasted forms; the second drawer con- 
 tains a series of six Polygons; the third drawer, a 
 series of six Circles, diminishing in size; the fourth 
 drawer, a series of Quadrilaterals containing one 
 square and five rectangles; the fifth drawer, a series 
 of six Triangles, and the sixth drawer contains Oval, 
 Ellipse, Flower Forms, etc. These are so important 
 and have such a vital part to play in the training 
 of the child to write, that the mother should be 
 especially careful in the way they are used. The 
 entire thirty-six different shapes should not, of 
 course, be put before the child at the beginning 
 
56 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 but only a drawer of the most strongly contrasted 
 shapes— triangles, oblong, etc. He should be taught 
 at the. very start (as in the case of the solid geo- 
 metric insets) to aid his sight by touch. While 
 he holds the inset by the little knob with his left 
 hand, he traces the outline of the inset with his 
 right forefinger, and from left to right, or in the 
 direction in which writing is done. Then, while 
 still holding the inset, he traces around the outline 
 of the depression into which he thinks the inset he 
 holds would fit. In finding the right opening, he 
 is guided more by his finger-tips than by his eyes. 
 It is quite important to establish this habit of tra- 
 cing the outline with his fingers, as it has a vital 
 bearing on learning to write. 
 
 As the child masters the tray of the more simple 
 forms so that he finds it easy for him to place the 
 insets in the corresponding opening, the less simple 
 forms should be given him, a few at a time. After 
 learning to distinguish between a triangle and a 
 circle quickly and accurately, the next day he should 
 be given two triangles and two circles of different 
 sizes, to sharpen his sense of shape and dimension. 
 After a time, usually a fortnight or so, he should 
 be able to replace in the correct openings six tri- 
 angles of differing shapes, and six circles of differ- 
 ing sizes. When he has learned to do that, he has 
 attained a mastery of his little brain and a capacity 
 
USE OF THE APPARATUS 57 
 
 to make it work accurately, of which his mother 
 may well be proud. 
 
 It is perhaps well to give here the warning which 
 can never be too often sounded — not to force the 
 child's attention to this, any more than to any other 
 problem. He is the best judge of when mental 
 fatigue sets in, and at the least sign of inattention, 
 the tray of insets should be put away and some 
 romping game outdoors played, or a quiet story told. 
 The mother is so apt to become fascinated with the 
 rapid advance of the child's mentality that she 
 can hardly forbear urging him a trifle to go a step 
 or so beyond his natural inclination. 
 
 EXERCISE TWELVE 
 REPLACING THE INSETS BLINDFOLDED 
 
 When the insets have become old friends, it is 
 well to try blindfolding the child, and setting him 
 the new problem of replacing the geometric forms 
 by the sense of touch only. Here it is well to go 
 back again to first principles and to begin once 
 more with the easiest forms, until he grows accus- 
 tomed to depending on his touch only. This is 
 splendid practice, and a child who has had it grows 
 astonishingly keen in his capacity to take in accu- 
 rate impressions from his finger-tips. How valuable 
 the ability to work without looking at what is 
 
58 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 being done, can be estimated from the experience 
 of almost any variety of band-worker. The old 
 grandmother who knits without once looking at her 
 needle can work all day long without a particle of 
 fatigue, while the knitter who needs to be verifying 
 each stitch by her eyes soon tires them out and 
 must either stop working or suffer a violent head- 
 ache. The stenographer who writes by touch has 
 a tremendous advantage over the other who needs 
 to use her eyes. A large part of our modern eye- 
 strain and nervous headaches, and even nervous 
 prostration, comes, so the doctors say, from the 
 constant use of the eyes in processes which might 
 be cared for by the other senses, if they were only 
 well trained. So that the Montessori child, learning 
 to distinguish between his insets without looking at 
 them, is learning a mental habit which will be of 
 incalculable benefit to him throughout life. 
 
 Dr. Montessori lays great stress upon the value 
 of the work with these wooden geometric insets. 
 They are so practical and at the same time so fas- 
 cinating that the child learns a great deal in work- 
 ing with them. The primary object is that the 
 child should learn form; that is, that he should 
 see the difference between various objects. Ordi- 
 narily, this is a very tedious task for the child, 
 but Dr. Montessori, by means of her self-correcting 
 apparatus, has made a game that appeals to normal 
 
USE OF THE APPARATUS 59 
 
 children. The mother should not be at all surprised 
 if after a few weeks of play with this apparatus 
 the child should begin to point out various objects 
 in his environment, comparing them with certain 
 insets he has learned to know. These exercises 
 are very important. The mother should take the 
 care and the time that may be necessary for the 
 child to reap the greatest benefits from the work. 
 
 EXERCISE THIRTEEN 
 
 with which the child's comprehension passes 
 
 from solid objects to the plane line, from 
 
 the concrete to the abstract 
 
 Plane G-eometric Figures Eeproduced in Three 
 Series of Cards. — After the final mastery of the 
 geometric insets, the child is given a series of cards, 
 representing the same forms as those of his insets. 
 In the first of these three series, the forms are cut 
 out of solid blue paper and mounted on white cards; 
 in the second, the forms are cut out of heavy line 
 drawings and mounted on the cards, and in the 
 third, the outline or form is represented only by 
 a thin blue line, such as is drawn by any pencil. 
 
 The child mixes up, say, six or eight of these 
 cards, and six or eight corresponding insets, and 
 then sets himself the task of putting the insets on 
 the corresponding card. Here he has not the sense 
 
60 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 of touch to guide him, and learns gradually the 
 meaning of the line, passing from the solid blue 
 form to the form merely drawn in outline. 
 
 After the child has played with these various 
 cards for some time he will have acquired a very 
 definite idea of symbolism. That is, it will be com- 
 paratively easy for him to understand how a series 
 of lines can stand for an object. Ordinarily, it is 
 not difficult for the child to see the connection 
 between a photograph and an object, but with an 
 abstract line it is entirely different. "What is there 
 in the symbols c-a-t that would connect them with 
 a cat ? Dr. Montessori believes that the child 
 should understand symbolism before the alphabet 
 is taken up. When the child has mastered all of 
 the various exercises with these geometric cards, 
 and thus gained a definite understanding of sym- 
 bolism, it will be comparatively easy for him to 
 get the relation between a written word and the 
 object which that word represents. Dr. Mon- 
 tessori at all times goes from the simple to the 
 complex, from the concrete to the abstract. With 
 this simple explanation I trust the mother will 
 understand the significance of these exercises. 
 
USE OF THE APPARATUS 61 
 
 EXERCISE FOURTEEN 
 
 involving the fikst use of the pencil 
 Plane Geometrical Insets Made in Metal. — 
 And with this recognition of the line, might go 
 very well with the average child the beginning of 
 the use of the pencil. This exercise is done with 
 the Plane Geometric Insets made of metal. 
 Accompanying the metal insets in the formal 
 Montessori apparatus are two wooden trays with 
 sloping tops, large enough to hold three of the 
 metal insets and intended to be placed by the 
 child on his own table. It is, of course, unnec- 
 essary to point out that a small table and chair, 
 just the right size for a child, are essentials in 
 Montessori or any other right training for child- 
 hood. The child puts a piece of white paper on 
 the wooden tray or on his own table, then places 
 the square inset over the paper and lifts out the 
 central piece by its little knob. The white paper 
 shows through the hole (see x in illustration) in 
 the shape of the inset. The child is given a 
 pencil and is shown, once, very briefly and simply, 
 how to hold it and how to trace around the out- 
 line of the inset. He is apt to make bad work 
 of this at first, as this is the very first use of 
 the pencil, but his interest almost certainly carries 
 him through the first difficulties. To begin with 
 
62 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 he simply traces the outline, lifts off the metal 
 inset and admires the design on the paper 
 beneath. The metal edge of the inset is a guide 
 to his staggering little pencil and before long he 
 will be able to make a good, clear outline, join- 
 ing the ends neatly. 
 
 EXERCISE FIFTEEN 
 THE USE OF COLORED CRAYONS 
 
 First Lesson in Drawing. — When this has 
 been accomplished the child is furnished with a 
 box of colored crayons, and invited to fill in the 
 " picture" he has made with strokes of his 
 crayon. The fact that he is working in color 
 stimulates his interest, and few children need 
 more spur to advance than the simple permission 
 to use the crayons. At first, and for many days, 
 his efforts to fill in the outlines will be ludicrous 
 in their inaccuracy. He should not be corrected, 
 and should be allowed to pass from one form to 
 another as often as he pleases, being supplied 
 with an unlimited amount of paper and leisure 
 for this new undertaking. Little by little, as he 
 works at this accomplishment, along with other 
 Montessori " games" he begins to "get the hang 
 of it," in our vernacular phrase. The lines 
 become more and more parallel, fewer and fewer 
 
USE OF THE APPARATUS 63 
 
 go wildly outside the line enclosing the outline, 
 and finally the geometric form is shown in color 
 on the white paper almost as though it had been 
 printed. This advance is not rapid, however, in 
 the case of most children, and nothing should be 
 done to hurry it. Occasionally a child gets tired 
 of the whole process and will • play with other 
 things for several days without recurring to his 
 ''drawing," although on the other hand, some chil- 
 dren are, from the first, so fascinated by the prob- 
 lem that they can hardly let it alone. These 
 exercises afford the first direct preparation for 
 writing and design. From the very beginning 
 the child acquires a free, easy muscular move- 
 ment. After these exercises the work of free 
 designing with crayons and water colors may be 
 successfully taken up. 
 
 Meal-times and Xap-times Not to Be I 
 fered With. — The child should be allowed to 
 choose his own time for working at this (pro- 
 vided, of course, that it does not interfere with 
 some necessary regulations of the household, meal- 
 times or nap-times) and to spend as much or as 
 little time over it as he wishes, although if there 
 seems any likelihood that he has really forgotten 
 it, his attention may be called to it again. 
 
64 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 EXERCISE SIXTEEN 
 TRAINING THE EYE; THE MATCHING OF COLOES 
 
 Color Boxes and Coloe "Games/' — At about 
 the same stage of development that the geometric 
 insets are first given to a child, the color boxes 
 can be shown him and the color " games" begun. 
 The color boxes are sets of spools, wound with 
 silk of varying shades, eight of the main colors, 
 and eight shades of each. At first the child is 
 shown only two strongly contrasting colors, red 
 and blue, for instance. The name is pronounced 
 clearly and distinctly, holding up the correspond- 
 ing color. When the child has grasped this the 
 colors are allowed to lie on the table and the 
 mother says, "Give me red," or "Give me blue." 
 When the child has progressed this far (this may 
 be the next day, or even two or three days after 
 the first introduction) the teacher or mother holds 
 up a spool and asks, "What is this?" When the 
 child can answer correctly, "blue" or "red," he 
 has thoroughly learned those two colors and can 
 progress to another one. When the eight main 
 colors have been learned in this way, the child 
 can begin to match them. Four spools are laid 
 on the table, two red and two blue (of course of 
 exactly the same shade). The child picks out the 
 two red ones and lays them side by side, and then 
 
USE OF THE APPARATUS 65 
 
 does the same for the blue. From this he can go 
 by degrees until there are sixteen spools on the 
 table, eight pairs, which he must put together. 
 This is a "game" which seldom ever fails to 
 arouse the interest and attention of the most 
 lethargic child. And this also soon shows the 
 mother if there is any color-blindness present. 
 
 EXERCISE SEVENTEEN 
 
 Differentiation of Coloes. — After the match- 
 ing has been mastered, the next step is to differ- 
 entiate between light and dark shades of the same 
 color, dark red and light pink, for instance, or 
 dark and light blue. This goes in pairs at first 
 also, but little by little, as the child's accuracy 
 increases, he may go up to the eight shades of 
 the different colors. As a rule, children acquire 
 an appreciation and accuracy in handling colors 
 which astonishes their ill-trained elders. Some 
 Montessori children have become so proficient that 
 they can "carry a color in the eye," as it is 
 called. That is, they can look at a spool of a 
 certain shade of purple, go across the room to a 
 pile of spools and pick out the color matching it. 
 This is a feat of which few elders would be 
 capable. 
 
 Games and Practical Application. — With these 
 color spools, a variety of "games" can be 
 
66 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 played, which any mother can invent, according 
 to the number and age of the children wishing 
 to play. They are all variations on .the principle 
 which is used in the game of "authors," and can 
 be made simple or hard as circumstances direct. 
 Furthermore, as in the treatment of fabrics, the 
 child's attention is awakened to the presence of 
 color in everything about him, and his interest 
 aroused in the problem of determining the color 
 of the carpets, curtains, dresses, carriages, shoes, 
 etc., which he sees in his every-day life. In my 
 own family, a child of three-and-a-half came to 
 me the other day saying, "I've been looking 
 around and I can tell the color of everything in 
 this room, except the looking-glass, and I cannot 
 tell the color of that!" 
 
 The reason that Dr. Montessori uses these 
 little spools upon which the silk is wound is that 
 the child's attention is primarily directed to the 
 color and not to the object. The spools in them- 
 selves are very unattractive while the richly col- 
 ored silk is just the opposite. Silk thread is used 
 because it gives a deeper, richer color, at the same 
 time is more practical and makes possible the 
 various gradations. Too much importance can- 
 not be placed upon the developing of the chro- 
 matic sense in early childhood. If the child at an 
 early age acquires a deep interest in shades and 
 
USE OP THE APPARATUS 67 
 
 tints of colorings, lie will not only be able to 
 appreciate his environment much more, but this 
 knowledge and appreciation of color will be of 
 inestimable value to him in later years. The 
 ethical element in such training is also very 
 important. If the child is taught to see the 
 beautiful and to appreciate it even in his early 
 years it must have a marked effect upon his later 
 life. Psychologists tell us that we are the crea- 
 tures of habit and it is only reasonable to believe 
 that if these very desirable habits can be formed 
 in early childhood they must be very beneficial 
 when the child reaches maturity. 
 
 EXERCISE EIGHTEEN 
 
 SPECIAL PHYSICAL AND GYMNASTIC EXERCISES FOE 
 THE YOUNG CHILD 
 
 In connection with all these exercises with the 
 ftlontessori apparatus there are a number of other 
 'exercises, chiefly gymnastic, which should be con- 
 stantly in use. As soon as the child can walk 
 at all, every effort should be made to teach him 
 further and more definitely the art of equilib- 
 rium of his body. When we walk we continually 
 balance our weight so that we do not fall down, 
 and the more accurately and unconsciously we do 
 this, the better we walk. Now, bodily poise is 
 
68 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 one of the very important factors in bodily grace 
 and even in strength, certainly in comfort. The 
 average child does not balance his body well, 
 instinctively. He needs training, and he is eager 
 and anxious for it. 
 
 1. The Chalk Line Exercise. — In the Casa dei 
 Bambini the exercise used for this need is 
 arranged very simply by means of a long chalk 
 line drawn on the floor. The children are invited 
 to see how accurately they can walk along this 
 line without stepping off. At first the little tots 
 cannot manage this at all. Later they learn to 
 walk very slowly along the line, and later, when 
 they are four or five, to run as swiftly as deer 
 along this line without swerving once from it. A 
 child who can do that will be able, unconsciously, 
 to walk straight across a room to a chair, with- 
 out tripping or falling over the furniture. 
 
 2. Walking the Two-by-Foue. — A modification 
 of this exercise can be arranged out-of-doors by lay- 
 ing a long piece of wood (what is usually known 
 as a " two-by-four" or a " piece of studding") 
 down on the ground and permitting the child to 
 try to walk along this without falling off. He 
 is usually ready to spend a long time at this 
 exercise, and to return to it repeatedly. The bene- 
 fit derived from it is beyond calculating. 
 
 3. Rope-Balancing and Walking Backwaed. — 
 
USE OF THE APPARATUS 69 
 
 If a length of rope can be hung up where the 
 child can reach the dangling end of it he will 
 devise for himself a variety of exercises in bal- 
 ancing which will greatly increase his mastery of 
 his body. Another exercise of great value for 
 little children, is in walking backward. At first 
 they need to be helped, for their little brains are 
 so unused to reversing the processes of ordinary 
 walking that they are quite helpless, but after a 
 comparatively short time, they learn this new 
 trick and practice it with delight. If possible 
 every small child should have a little swing, just 
 the right height for him, and a tiny spring- 
 board ending over a pile of hay or anything soft, 
 from which he may jump and learn to balance 
 his body in the air. He should also be encour- 
 aged to jump, not from stairs or any other ele- 
 vation, for that means danger to the spine, but 
 from one rug to another, for instance. It is sur- 
 prising what advances in physical strength and 
 mastery of his muscles is made by a child who is 
 provided with such exercises. 
 
 4. The Baby Ball. — Most children of three are 
 too young to have the least capacity for throw- 
 ing or catching a ball, but if a ball is hung on a 
 long string and tossed to them, the string retards 
 the motion just enough to make it possible for 
 their little brains to set their muscles in action, 
 
70 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 and they will play with great joy and profit for 
 a long time, at this variety of "babyball." 
 
 5. Water Play. — One exercise, which always 
 delights children, and improves their table-manners 
 insensibly, is playing with water. This, too, is 
 rather hard to manage indoors, although not 
 impossible. The child is furnished with a basin 
 of water, a big spoon, and receptacles of various 
 sizes and shapes to fill; bottles, large and small; 
 glasses, cups, salt-cellars, etc. He is almost sure 
 to spend much time happily engaged in filling up 
 and emptying these vessels, and learning a great 
 deal about the nature of water contained in recep- 
 tacles. A child who has " played" in this way 
 with water, for half an hour a day, during a 
 month or two, will spill water from his glass at 
 table, or be untidy in the use of his spoon, just 
 as infrequently as the ordinary adult. (He has 
 learned the trick! And he has had a great deal 
 of fun while he learned it). His mother will find 
 that he takes no more pleasure in being " messy" 
 over his meals than she does, and as soon as he 
 is able to avoid accidents at table, will have pre- 
 sentable table manners. 
 
 6. Encourage Child's Inventiveness. — Of course 
 the greatest freedom should be allowed for any 
 exercise (not injurious to the child) which his 
 invention hits upon. The action so common among 
 
USE OF THE APPAEATUS 71 
 
 little children of throwing themselves on a chair 
 or stool and kicking their swinging feet in the air 
 is an excellent exercise for the muscles of the legs 
 and should never be discouraged. To climb up and 
 down a short length of ladder, with the rounds 
 set at a distance appropriate for short legs, is also 
 very beneficial, although hard to arrange for the 
 unfortunate child who lives in a flat, without access 
 to a bit of out-doors all his own. 
 
 7. Should Share Household Work. — A child 
 who is being trained in the Montessori system 
 should also, as soon as it is at all possible, begin 
 to share in the work of the household. If he is 
 provided with a small broom and dustpan, there is 
 no reason why he should not keep his room fresh 
 and clean, and also clean up any litter of paper or 
 dirt which he makes in the course of the day. 
 Setting the table is a singularly good exercise for 
 a little child, although, of course, it is enough to 
 begin with, if he does only a small part of the 
 whole operation. The important element should be 
 that what he does, he does entirely himself. If 
 he is set to put a spoon at each place, he should 
 be left (after due explanation, as brief as possible) 
 to wrestle with the problem and to solve it with 
 his own unaided invention. Later he can be given 
 all the silver to put in place, and as he learns in 
 his Montessori exercises, mastery over his muscles, 
 
72 THE MONTBSSORI MANUAL 
 
 can be entrusted with china and glass at four and 
 five years of age, which an untrained child of ten 
 or eleven would be almost sure to break. 
 
 Pains should be taken to allow even the very 
 little child to watch, from a comfortable position, 
 any household operation in which he shows interest. 
 Fortunate, indeed, the child whose mother still 
 cooks and sews and bakes and washes, and allows 
 her children to aid in these processes. Such chil- 
 dren receive Montessori training without any 
 formal apparatus. 
 
 SUMMAEY OF CHILD'S ATTAINMENTS IN THE MAS- 
 
 teky of Himself and His Woeld. — But, to return 
 to those formal and ingeniously devised "play- 
 things" which so wonderfully and insensibly lead 
 the little child to a mastery of his world and him- 
 self, let us suppose that the child for whom the 
 box of apparatus came into the home, has now 
 been " playing" with the different pieces of appa- 
 ratus described in the preceding paragraphs for 
 about three or four months, longer if he was only 
 three when he began, a shorter time if he was 
 older. He has learned to replace the geometric 
 insets blindfolded by the sense of touch only, to 
 distinguish fabrics and materials, to build the 
 Tower, the Broad Stair and the Long Stair, to 
 match colors, to distinguish between noises of vary- 
 ing intensity, to balance himself deftly, to manage 
 
USE OF THE APPARATUS 73 
 
 a glass of water. His mother may very well con- 
 sider that it is now time to begin to teach him the 
 beginning of reading and writing, although, as a 
 matter of fact, the beginning was taught when he 
 first learned the distinction between rough sand- 
 paper and smoothly planed board. 
 
 EXERCISE NINETEEN 
 LEARNING TO WRITE AT THE AGE OF FOUR 
 
 Sandpaper Letters. — The child is told that 
 there is a new game to play and the little paste- 
 board box containing the famous Montessori sand- 
 paper letters is brought out. This alphabet is 
 composed of letters in plain, round script, cut out 
 of black sand, or emery, paper and pasted upon 
 smooth white cards. Here at once the child's past 
 practice in learning about objects through touch- 
 ing them, as well as looking at them, comes into 
 play. He is shown a letter, the mother pronounces 
 the sound of it clearly, and shows him how to 
 trace around it with his finger in the way one 
 would write it. He should touch it very lightly, 
 as he has been taught to do with all his work, 
 and should, at first, only trace the letters when 
 some one is watching him, to make sure he does 
 not do it backward, or upsidedown. Make sure 
 that he knows the vocal sound of the letter or 
 
74 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 figure he is tracing. Most children of three-and- 
 a-half or four have seen so much of writing 
 among the adults of their acquaintance that their 
 curiosity is deeply aroused as to the mysterious 
 process and they are delighted with the prospect 
 of learning something about it. They need, as a 
 rule, no further incentive than the statement that 
 this is the beginning of their learning how to 
 write. 
 
 Testing the Child's Comprehension. — As soon as 
 a few letters are learned, the teacher, or mother, 
 should make sure of the child's grasp of them in 
 the same way she tested his knowledge of colors. 
 She lays down four or five on the table and asks 
 for a certain one. "Give me 'a,' please," or 
 "Give me 'b.'" When the child can do this 
 quickly and surely, she next holds one up and 
 asks him what it is. When he can identify those 
 first letters he can be allowed to pass on to 
 others, and as the number even in our alphabet is 
 quite limited, it will not be long before he has 
 mastered all the letters. 
 
 Begins to Recognize and Spell Words. — 'Before 
 that time, however, if his interest in the process 
 is lively, he can begin to recognize words, and to 
 compose them. If he has learned "p" and "a" 
 he can compose the familiar word "papa," and 
 will, in most cases, do this of his own accord if 
 
USE OF THE APPARATUS 75 
 
 his attention is called to the pronunciation of the 
 word. If his mother says "How would you make 
 this word?" and then pronounces it very slowly, 
 separating the sounds distinctly, the child will 
 analyze the word into its component parts. "It 
 begins with 'p,' " she says, giving the phonetic 
 sound and not the name of the letter. Of course 
 the child reaches instinctively for the "p," and 
 thereafter recognizes the sound of "a," puts the 
 two together and looks on delighted at the first word 
 of his composition. 
 
 EXERCISE TWENTY 
 
 Learning to Eead the Regular Movable 
 Alphabet. — At this point the child should be pre- 
 sented with the Regular Movable Alphabet of cut- 
 out script letters in stiff paper. 
 
 .These come in two large, flat, pasteboard boxes 
 with partitions dividing the same into separate 
 compartments for each letter. There are four or 
 five duplicates of each letter, making a like num- 
 ber of complete alphabets and, of course, addi- 
 tional letters can easily be made at home, if more 
 are needed. These letters are not pasted on cards, 
 like the sandpaper letters, and are easily han- 
 dled and arranged as the child wishes, and with 
 these begin his composition and recognition of 
 words. He is not troubled, as in the old system, 
 
76 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 by the difficulty of forming the letters, as all he 
 has had to do is to take them from the com- 
 partments and make words with them, long before 
 his little fingers have acquired the ability to 
 handle a pencil surely and accurately. 
 
 Practice Words. — Of course English-speaking 
 children have a much harder time to compose 
 words from letters than Italian children, whose 
 language is phonetically written. The English- 
 speaking mother who attempts to teach her own 
 child how to write and read, will infallibly become 
 a convert to the ideas of the Simple Spelling 
 Board; but, since it is out of the question for 
 the present to change the wild insanities of Eng- 
 lish spelling, we must possess our souls in 
 patience and exercise as much ingenuity as pos- 
 sible in introducing our little one to the life-long 
 burden of an illogically spelled language. It, is 
 well for this purpose to choose for the first words, 
 the very simplest ones, like "rat," "pin," "hen," 
 "mama," "papa," "dog," etc., words which are 
 not only within a child's natural comprehension, 
 but which offer no difficulties in the way of con- 
 sistent spelling. When the inevitable difficulties 
 occur, the best that can be done is to rely on the 
 naturally quick memory of childhood, and to fall 
 back on the helpless statement that "it's spelled 
 that way because that is the way it's spelled." 
 
USE OF THE APPAEATUS 77 
 
 However, there is, even in English, quite a vocab- 
 ulary of sensibly spelled words, which the child 
 can acquire as a working beginning. 
 
 EXERCISE TWENTY-ONE 
 EEVIEW EXEECISES WITH APPAEATUS ALEEADY MASTEEED 
 
 First. — But although he may from now on, 
 "play" with the movable alphabet, the use of the 
 sandpaper letters should be steadily continued, caus- 
 ing him to trace them, as they are written, sev- 
 eral times a day, if his interest allows. It is almost 
 certain that he will ask to do this, as touching the 
 letters brings home their form to his little brain 
 much more certainly than merely looking at them. 
 Sometimes children fail to recognize a letter when 
 they look at it, although they can identify it per- 
 fectly after their fingers have traced it. This, being 
 one of the essential steps in writing, must not be 
 neglected. Children in Montessori schools, even 
 after they can write quite fluently, very frequently 
 go through the tracing of the sandpaper letters to 
 refresh their memories with an exact knowledge of 
 the shape of each letter. 
 
 Second. — At the same time that these exercises 
 are being repeated as often as the child's interest 
 makes possible, the exercises with "drawing," 
 that is, tracing the outline of one of the 
 
78 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 geometric insets on the paper and filling it in with 
 colored chalk, should also be steadily continued, for 
 this tracing teaches the child the use of the pencil. 
 Third. — The Explosion Into Writing. — I quote 
 from A Montessori Mother a paragraph descri- 
 bing the final success of these three exercises, "All 
 these processes go on, day after day, side by 
 side, all invisibly converging towards one end. The 
 practice with the crayons, the recognition of the 
 sandpaper letters by eye and touch, the revelation 
 as to the formation of words with the movable alpha- 
 bet, are so many roads leading to the painless acqui- 
 sition of the art of writing. They draw nearer and 
 nearer together, and then one day, quite sud- 
 denly, the famous "Montessori explosion into 
 writing" occurs. The teacher of experience can 
 tell when this explosion is imminent. First, 
 the parallel lines which the child makes to fill and 
 color the geometric figures become singularly even 
 and regular; second, acquaintance with the alphabet 
 becomes so thorough that he recognizes the letters 
 by sense of touch only; and, third, he increases in 
 facility for composing words with the movable alpha- 
 bet. The burst into spontaneous writing usually only 
 comes after these three conditions are present. It 
 is to be noted that for a long time after this explo- 
 sion into writing, the children continue incessantly 
 to go through the three preparatory steps, tracing 
 
USE OF THE APPARATUS 79 
 
 with their fingers the sandpaper letters, filling in 
 the geometric forms and composing with the movable 
 alphabet. These are for them what scales are for 
 the pianist, a necessary practice for " keeping the 
 hand in." 
 
 Fourth. — Cautions . to Be Observed. — There are 
 several cautions to be expressed about this whole 
 process of teaching a child to write and read by 
 the Montessori method. The most important one is 
 against hurry. Even more consistently and steadily 
 than with the rest of the apparatus, the child's 
 natural gait ought not to be in the slightest degree 
 hastened by urging from outside. He will go, in 
 any case, so very much more rapidly, easily and 
 surely, than children in school, that urging him is 
 not necessary. The temptation with a bright, quickly 
 adaptable child is to attempt to "make a record." 
 The mother remembers reading that in Montessori 
 schools a child of four usually learns to write after 
 about six weeks of preparation and that children 
 of five usually spend only a month in the three 
 exercises before they begin to write; and she is 
 anxious that her child shall not fall behind. She 
 should bear in mind two or three factors which 
 make her problem different from that of the Casa 
 dei Bambini. First, the Casa dei Bambini child 
 is associated with other children, some of whom 
 have already learned to write, before his very eyes. 
 
80 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 He lias examples and stimulus to efforts which the 
 single American child, working alone, lacks, in the 
 nature of things. Furthermore, the Directress of 
 the Montessori Casa dei Bambini was specially 
 trained for her undertaking, and has had a great 
 deal of experience with all sorts of children; so 
 that she is at an advantage compared to the Ameri- 
 can mother taking up the method for the first time, 
 and working out her own and her child's problems. 
 There is no occasion for her to be discouraged by 
 these facts, for success is almost sure, if she perse- 
 veres and with the right spirit. The mother should 
 always act deliberately, she should take the greatest 
 pains to be sure that the child understands every 
 step before he passes on to the next, and that he 
 has thoroughly mastered one process before he is 
 allowed to progress to another more complicated. 
 Above all, she should refrain from forcing the child's 
 attention in the slightest degree. 
 
 EXERCISE TWENTY-TWO 
 
 UNDIRECTED WORK; MAINTAINING THE CHILD'S NORMAL 
 OR EVERYDAY LIFE 
 
 All the time that this work with the drawing, 
 and filling in of geometric forms, the tracing of 
 the sandpaper letters and the composition of words 
 with the movable alphabet is going on, the child's 
 
USE OF THE APPARATUS 81 
 
 usual normal life should be continued. There should 
 be plenty of undirected outdoor play, where the 
 child's natural inventiveness has scope, " hide-and- 
 seek" games, "tag," etc., with plenty of fun in the 
 company of other children should be encouraged. 
 There should be much reading to him of well- 
 selected stories and poems suited to his age; with 
 long hours of sleep, and a certain amount of helpful 
 service about the household work. A "Montessori 
 child" does not by any means signify a child who 
 devotes most of his time to exercises with the formal 
 "boughten" apparatus. 
 
 Plant and Animal Pets. — He should have, if 
 it is possible to arrange this, a plant or two of his 
 own (even at the age of three) and a pet of his 
 own, preferably a good-natured kitten, for he is 
 rather young as yet for a puppy. He should assume 
 the real responsibility for these plant and animal 
 pets, caring for them himself. Later, he should 
 have a little plot of ground, and learn from actual 
 experience the wonder of growth from seeds. 
 
 How the Child ' Learns Self-Care. — He should 
 have in his own room, or in a corner of another's 
 (if he has no room of his own) a tiny washstand, 
 with a little bowl and pitcher, light enough for 
 him to handle, and a mirror hung low enough for 
 him to see if he has succeeded in getting his face 
 clean. He should be allowed the time necessary to 
 
82 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 wash his face and hands, and should be taught, to 
 empty the bowl and to keep his washstand neat 
 and clean. If this habit is begun at an early age, 
 it is not at all difficult for a very young child to 
 acquire it very thoroughly, and to be more con- 
 scientious about it, and similar matters of personal 
 neatness, than many a half -grown boy or girl who 
 have never been systematically trained. As soon 
 as possible, he should be encouraged and allowed 
 to dress himself, his clothes being made with this 
 in view, although there must always be some but- 
 tons which three and four-year-old fingers cannot 
 reach, and should assume the responsibility of put- 
 ting away his own clothes and knowing where they 
 are. People who have struggled with older chil- 
 dren on these subjects will be surprised to note how 
 naturally and easily a little child will assume these 
 helpful and desirable habits. The important point 
 is to " catch him young," before he has learned 
 other bad habits of irresponsibility and sloth. Of 
 course, there should be, as far as humanly possible, 
 the greatest amount of regularity and routine in 
 the little life. He should eat his meals at regular 
 hours, feeding himself . and sitting at a low table ; 
 he should take his naps regularly; he should always 
 "pick up" his own room before leaving it in the 
 morning, and do what small household tasks are 
 his every day, without fail. 
 
USE OF THE APPARATUS 83 
 
 And this simple, industrious, tranquil life, with 
 no excitements of joining in adult "pleasures"; full 
 of profitable "play" which is educational, and per- 
 meated with a sense of responsibility on the child's 
 part for the conduct of his own life, is the Mon- 
 tessori life for a child between two and seven. It 
 is not enough that he construct the Tower, and the 
 Long Stair, and learn his sandpaper letters perfectly; 
 he must learn to be a self-dependent, self-respecting, 
 self -trusting citizen of his little world. 
 
 EXERCISE TWENTY-THREE 
 FIRST STEPS IN ARITHMETIC 
 
 Counting Boxes and Sandpaper Numbers. — We 
 have now to consider the question of arithmetic and 
 the Montessori application of the subject to the child 
 of the average American home. There is a preju- 
 dice in the minds of most Americans about pre- 
 senting mathematics to children under six, no matter 
 how simply it may be arranged. My own experi- 
 ence, backed up by that of the Casa dei Bambini, 
 is that children over three take a lively interest in 
 the sequence of numbers, and in some of the simpler 
 processes of arithmetic, if those processes can be 
 presented to them in a sufficiently concrete form. 
 The Montessori apparatus for this purpose is very 
 simple, and can be supplemented by several other 
 devices, easily obtained in any home. 
 
84 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 These counting boxes comprise two small boxes, 
 with five compartments or divisions in each. Accom- 
 panying the two boxes are fifty smooth, round sticks, 
 exactly alike, and a set of numbers from to 9, 
 cut out of sandpaper and pasted on white cards. 
 The counting sticks give the child a concrete basis 
 for the abstract names of the numbers, and he learns 
 to associate the symbol with the concrete object. 
 At first the child does not play with the sandpaper 
 numbers. These are removed from the boxes and 
 he but wrestles with the problem of oral counting, 
 using the sticks. One good way to begin is by 
 arranging one of the boxes as the illustration shows, 
 the one to the left of the page, the numbers having 
 been removed; that is, there are no sticks in the 
 first compartment, one in the next, two in the next, 
 three in the next, and four in the last. This exer- 
 cise is, of course, for a very little child, who has 
 no idea of the definite sequence of numbers, or of 
 how to determine how many objects he holds in his 
 hand. The other box is then emptied of all its 
 contents and given the child, with an ample supply 
 of the counting sticks, and he is invited to make 
 his box exactly like the one his mother has arranged. 
 Most children can, even at a very early age, quickly 
 put one stick in the second compartment and two in 
 the next. Here frequently, at the very beginning, 
 there ensues some mental confusion, and much eager 
 
USE OF THE APPARATUS 85 
 
 gazing at the three sticks in the box arranged by t 
 the mother. Anxious attempts are made by the 
 child to lay an equal number in the next compart- 
 ment of his own box. The mother should not help 
 in this process. It does the child no good if she 
 interferes and does it herself, or corrects his mis- 
 take. If he has arrived at the age when his brain 
 can master this simple arithmetical idea, he will 
 ultimately solve the problem and place the proper 
 number of sticks in each compartment. If he has 
 not yet arrived at the right age or state of develop- 
 ment, he will not really take in the significance of 
 anything his mother may do, seeking to aid him. 
 If he repeatedly performs this exercise incorrectly, 
 or shows signs of mental fatigue, such as nervous 
 irritation at his inability to solve the problem, the 
 boxes should be removed, and the attempt postponed 
 until a later day. 
 
 Astonishing Mental Growth. — The mental 
 growth of children at this age is so astonishingly 
 rapid that sometimes a child will be able easily 
 to solve a problem only a week after he has found 
 it perfectly impenetrable. It is quite possible that 
 during the week some subconscious forces of the 
 mind have been, quite unknown to the child, work- 
 ing on the problem presented. In no other way 
 can an explanation be found of the surprising man- 
 ner in which, after failing on a Montessori exercise, 
 
86 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 a child will take it up, several days later, without 
 having touched it in the meantime, and know how 
 to set to work purposefully and successfully. It 
 is far better to trust this principle of growth than 
 to attempt to urge the child to put forth powers 
 which he does not as yet possess. 
 
 Begins to Count. — As soon as he can complete 
 the series up to four, he can go on, one at a time, 
 to complete the series up to nine, as shown in the 
 illustration; and then, if he is the normal child, 
 with a wide-awake, intelligent, curious mind, he will 
 be observed "counting" everything in sight. He 
 is delighted with his new acquisition, and employs 
 it on all the material at hand. A child of three 
 and-a-half, who had just mastered the sequence in 
 the counting boxes, ran about the house, counting 
 the windows, the drawers in the bureaus, the chairs 
 in the rooms, the legs of the tables, and deriving 
 the most mysterious satisfaction, which lasted for 
 many days, from this new control of the world 
 about him. He gets, of course, from having his 
 interest and own initiative once aroused, vastly more 
 drill in repetition exercise than the most ingenious 
 teacher could give him. 
 
Children putting away Didactic material, National Kindergarten College, Chicago 
 
USE OF THE APPARATUS 87 
 
 EXERCISE TWENTY-FOUR 
 THE SANDPAPER NUMBERS ARE ADDED 
 
 Now is the time to bring out the sandpaper 
 numbers. He is taught these just as he learned his 
 letters, one at a time, and following the three regu- 
 lar steps. First, the mother guides the little fore- 
 finger over the rough sandpaper as the number 
 would be written, at the same time pronouncing 
 the name of the number, slowly and distinctly, and 
 adding no explanations. She should here, as always, 
 refrain from the wordy comments to which we are 
 all too much given, and should not say, "See, this 
 is 8. It looks like 'S,' only a little different; you 
 see, S is open here, and here," etc. She should, in- 
 stead, hold up the card, say clearly, "8," and show 
 the little fingers how to trace the outline. Then she 
 should lay several down on the table, and ask the 
 child, ' l Give me ' 7, " ' or, " Give me 1 2, ' please. ' ' When 
 he has mastered this, she should then hold up a card 
 and ask the child to tell her what it is. When he 
 can do this accurately, he has mastered his numbers. 
 According to his age and capacity, this may take him 
 two days, or two weeks. The next thing to do is to 
 teach him to connect them with the right number of 
 objects. And here the counting boxes come again 
 into play. He should arrange the series, and place 
 the right number in each compartment. The mother 
 
88 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 will be surprised to see that even after mastering 
 the names and looks of the number and the sequence 
 in the number boxes, the average child finds it 
 quite an intellectual effort to put the two things 
 together in his mind. He will need plenty of time 
 and quiet to struggle with the new problem, and 
 if it is too hard on the first trial, the number boxes 
 should be taken away without comment, and some 
 other "game" suggested. 
 
 EXERCISE TWENTY-FIVE 
 
 An Akithmetical Game with the Long Stair. 
 — Another arithmetical game is played with the 
 Long Stair. The stair is arranged in sequence and 
 a cardboard number corresponding with the num- 
 ber of rods in the section is leaned up against the 
 section; "1" against the section with only one rod, 
 the "2" against the next one, and so forth. I 
 remember seeing a child of four go slowly through 
 this exercise in a Casa dei Bambini, taking frequent 
 rests, but returning with a steady, purposeful indus- 
 try to his undertaking, until he had the whole 
 sequence up to ten correctly numbered. And then 
 he lay down and took a brief nap, being apparently 
 quite exhausted by the mental effort involved in 
 what seems the simplest possible of rational con- 
 nections between ideas. 
 
 A Game with Money. — About this time, or per- 
 
USE OF THE APPARATUS 89 
 
 haps a little earlier, it is well to begin to teach a 
 child the significance of money. He is always inter- 
 ested in this, seeing it of so much importance in 
 the • life of adults, and will play with it endlessly, 
 and study the possible combinations to be made 
 with it, if they are suggested to his mind. It is 
 better, if possible, to have new money. If this 
 cannot be managed, the coins should be thoroughly 
 cleansed before the child plays with them. The 
 mother should teach him the names of the different 
 coins with the same three steps used in teaching 
 him the names of the letters and numbers; that 
 is, first tell him the names, slowly, one or two at 
 a time; then ask him for a given coin; then point 
 to a given coin and ask what it is called. At first 
 the little child likes, as a rule, simply to sort out 
 the money into the right piles, all the pennies 
 together, all the nickels, all the quarters, etc. He 
 should be allowed to play in this way until he is 
 thoroughly acquainted with their names and sizes. 
 Then, if he is old enough to count with certainty 
 up to ten, the relative value of the different coins 
 can be explained to him; five pennies equal one 
 nickel, etc. This is somewhat complicated, and care 
 should be taken to go very slowly, only a little on 
 any one day. When he has grasped something of 
 this relation, the mother can hold up a nickel and 
 ask, "How many pennies do I want for this?" 
 
90 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 Or she and the child can play a simple version of 
 the " going shopping" game, always so fascinating 
 to older children. "I want six pennies for this 
 spool of thread." "How much do you want for 
 that doll?" etc. 
 
 Arithmetical Game with Counting Sticks. — 
 An interesting "game" which can be played with 
 numbers, if there are two or more children together, 
 is the following: A certain number of the count- 
 ing sticks, or any other objects such as clothespins, 
 stones, spoons, coins, etc., are placed on a table. 
 The mother then holds a bag containing the num- 
 bers up to ten. Each child draws a number at 
 random, and, without showing it to his companions, 
 goes back to his seat. When all have drawn their 
 numbers, each child goes up to the table and selects 
 from it the number of objects corresponding with 
 the number hidden in his hand. He carries these 
 back to his place and arranges them in order, and 
 waits for the mother or teacher to come and verify 
 the correctness of his counting. 
 
 Teaches Self-Control. — This simple game, 
 which would not amuse older children for a moment, 
 is of inexhaustible interest for little ones, and has 
 a various and complex influence on them. There 
 is a considerable amount of self-control involved in 
 their taking only the number of objects indicated 
 by the number they have drawn, since every child's 
 
USE OF THE APPARATUS 91 
 
 instinctive action is to grab all lie can hold and 
 carry off his prize in triumph. The mother should 
 explain that this spoils the fun of the game, which 
 consists in fitting the mysterious written sign to 
 the number of objects chosen. Another conception 
 which is firmly settled in the child's mind by this 
 and other similar " games" is the abstract idea of 
 "zero," since the child who draws zero selects no 
 objects at all. 
 
 Game with Sandpaper Numbers. — Another 
 arithmetical game which can be played with one 
 or many children is played with the sandpaper 
 numbers, or any large numbers, such as could be 
 cut out of old calendars. The mother or teacher 
 holds up a number and asks, "Come and give me 
 this many kisses," or, "Bring me this number of 
 pennies." This sort of "fun" familiarizes the mind 
 of the little child with the connection between the 
 written sign and the number, and especially fixes 
 in his brain (in the game just described) the real 
 concept of the sign "zero," which is often a stum- 
 blingblock to older children. 
 
 Game with Movable Alphabet. — A similar game 
 can be played with the movable alphabet, with older 
 children, who have learned the beginnings of read- 
 ing. The mother constructs a word, say for instance, 
 "pin," and, pointing it out to the child, says, "Bring 
 me this, please." The child who is first to read 
 
92 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 the word and select the article, wins. When sev- 
 eral children of the same age and acquirements play 
 this together, the fun, and intensity of interest, and 
 consequent sharpening of wits, form an invaluable 
 exercise. 
 
 Hide-and-Seek with Movable Alphabet.— A 
 game of hide-and-seek can also be played with chil- 
 dren who have begun to recognize words formed 
 with the movable alphabet. The mother constructs, 
 in different parts of the room, different simple 
 words which the child has already seen, such as 
 "pig," "hen," "dog," etc. The child is out of 
 the room while this is being done, and is called 
 back to be told, "I hear something grunting." He 
 then rushes about, peering under the chairs and 
 on the table and window-sills, rejecting all other 
 words he finds, until he comes triumphantly to "pig." 
 It is better, with little children, to use the movable 
 alphabet for these words, rather than writing them 
 on paper, even in the plainest script, for two reasons : 
 first, the child is more used to the movable alpha- 
 bet; and second, the letters are so very large that 
 there can be not the slightest opportunity for eye- 
 strain. 
 
USE OF THE APPARATUS 93 
 
 EXERCISE TWENTY-SIX 
 THE MONTESSORI SILENCE TRAINING 
 
 There is one phase of the Montessori training 
 which has not yet been touched upon, and it is 
 rather hard to manage in the ordinary small Amer- 
 ican family. That is the exercise known as "Making 
 the Silence. " I quote the description of this impress- 
 ive exercise, given in A Montessori Mother, so that 
 the American mother may have some idea of what 
 she is to try to imitate, in her differing circumstances : 
 
 "One may be moving about between the groups 
 of busy children, or sitting watching their lively 
 animation, or listening to the cheerful hum of their 
 voices, when one feels a curious change in the atmos- 
 phere, like the hush which falls on a forest when 
 the sun suddenly goes behind a cloud. If it is 
 the first time that one has seen this "lesson," the 
 effect is startling. A quick glance around shows 
 that the children have stopped playing as well as 
 talking, and are sitting motionless at their tables, 
 their eyes on the blackboard, where, in large let- 
 ters, is written, 'Silenzio' (Silence). Even the little 
 ones, who cannot read, follow the example of the 
 older ones and not only sit motionless but look 
 fixedly at the magic word. The Directress is visible 
 now, standing by the blackboard, in an attitude and 
 with an expression of tranquillity which is as calm- 
 
94 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 ing to see as the meditative impassivity of a Bud- 
 dhist priest. The silence becomes more and more 
 intense. To untrained ears it seems absolute, but 
 an occasional gesture or warning smile from the 
 Directress shows that a little hand has moved, almost 
 but not quite inaudibly, or a chair has creaked. 
 
 "And then a real veil of twilight falls to inten- 
 sify the effect. The Directress goes quietly about 
 from window to window, closing the shutters. In 
 the ensuing twilight, the children bow their heads 
 on their clasped hands, in the attitude of prayer. 
 The Directress steps through the door into the next 
 room, and a slow voice, faint and clear, comes float- 
 ing back, calling a child's name: 'El — e — na!' 
 
 "A child lifts her head, opens her eyes, rises as 
 silently as a little spirit, and, with a glowing face 
 of exaltation, tiptoes out of the room, flinging her- 
 self joyously into the waiting arms. 
 
 "The summons comes again, 'Vit — to — rio!' 
 
 "A little boy lifts his head from his desk, show- 
 ing a face of sweet, sober content at being called, 
 and goes silently across the big room, taking his 
 place by the side of the Directress. And so it goes, 
 until perhaps fifteen children are clustered happily 
 about the teacher. Then, as informally and natu- 
 rally as it began, the 'game' is over. The teacher 
 comes back into the room with her usual quiet, firm 
 step; light pours in at the windows; the mystic 
 
USE OF THE APPARATUS 95 
 
 word is erased from the blackboard. The children 
 smile at each other, and begin to play again, per- 
 haps a little more quietly than before, perhaps more 
 gently, certainly with the shining eyes of devout 
 believers who have blessedly lost themselves in an 
 instant of rapt and self-forgetting devotion." 
 
 Now, this exercise is, of course, practically impos- 
 sible to imitate exactly in a small family, but some 
 adaptation of it should be made, for its benefits 
 are too important to be missed. It was begun as 
 an exercise for the sense of hearing, since the chil- 
 dren are called in the lightest possible whisper; 
 but it was soon seen to be of great moral impor- 
 tance. Such a period of perfect silence and immo- 
 bility, if he takes it of his own accord, has the most 
 miraculously calming effect on the average nervous, 
 high-strung American child. 
 
 It can be begun by a laughing competition between 
 mother and child, or between two or more chil- 
 dren, to see who can "keep the stillest." The one 
 who moves first has "lost." The mother can set 
 the example by standing in the middle of the room, 
 so intensely quiet that it is "as if she were not 
 there." Or she can sit beside the child on a bed 
 or sofa, and try with him to be so silent that any 
 one entering the room could not guess their pres- 
 ence. A slightly darkened room adds to the quiet- 
 ing effect of this exercise. Or she can leave him in 
 
96 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 a room by himself until lie is perfectly silent, and 
 then call him in a faint whisper, after which he 
 tries to leave the room so silently that his footsteps 
 cannot be heard. 
 
 EXERCISE TWENTY-SEVEN 
 
 GAMES THAT TEACH SELF-CONTROL AND COMMAND OF 
 THE FIVE SENSES 
 
 An exercise in pure immobility can be given by 
 showing the child his shadow, cast by a bright light 
 back of him, and asking him if he can keep so quiet 
 that his shadow will not quiver. The shadow is 
 so much enlarged that the slightest motion is readily 
 perceived by the child. 
 
 These exercises are taken because, to have per- 
 fect control of the muscles of the body, it is as 
 essential to be able to do nothing with them as to 
 be able to use them accurately. The ordinary chil- 
 dren's game, like " blind-man's buff," where the 
 players must be silent or they will be caught, are 
 fine practice for attaining this capacity to sit or 
 stand perfectly quiet, and children should be encour- 
 aged to play them. In fact, many of our homeliest 
 and most familiar children's games are based on 
 the pleasure children naturally take in learning self- 
 control, and command of their five senses. "Hide- 
 and-seek" in all its forms is fine exercise for little 
 children, who often, at the beginning, find it impos- 
 
USE OF THE APPARATUS 97 
 
 sible to control themselves long enough to remain 
 hidden. And "hunt-the-thimble" is splendid prac- 
 tice for concentrating the naturally wandering atten- 
 tion of little ones. They should be taught these 
 games carefully, and some supervision given at first, 
 to make sure they have caught the idea, and then 
 every inducement given to continue playing them. 
 
 EXERCISE TWENTY-EIGHT 
 
 TURNING THE CHILD'S EVERYDAY ACTIVITIES INTO 
 MONTESSORI EXERCISES 
 
 Before leaving the discussion of the formal Mon- 
 tessori apparatus and going on to the discussion 
 of the Montessori idea of obedience and discipline, 
 I wish to make one more general remark, to the 
 effect that the mother will do well to remember 
 that practically anything which the child takes into 
 its head to do (provided it is not injurious to him- 
 self or others) can be made into a more or less 
 efficient Montessori exercise, which will teach him 
 command of material objects and muscular self- 
 control. Eestrain as much as possible the natural 
 instinct to cry to an inquiring, investigating three 
 or four-year-old child, " Don't touch that!" "Come 
 away from there!" etc. Of course, if he is trying 
 to reach a basin of boiling water, such peremptory 
 commands to inaction are necessary. But in most 
 
98 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 cases a moment's reflection shows that the child's 
 action is not " naughty" in itself, and if the action 
 is directed in the right way, will harm neither him- 
 self nor the object touched. If he suddenly per- 
 ceives the curious way in which drawers in a bureau 
 open and shut, he should not be called away and 
 forbidden to touch them. Our first thought is that 
 he is trying to get at the contents of the drawer 
 to injure them; whereas, in nine cases out of ten, 
 his only interest is in mastering the mechanism of 
 the sliding drawer. Now is the time, while his 
 interest is aroused, to show him how to open and 
 shut drawers easily, without drawing them out too 
 far, without pinching his fingers when he shuts them 
 up. This practical exercise in one of the processes 
 of everyday life is quite as good as any " lesson" 
 taught by the Montessori apparatus in a Casa dei 
 Bambini. The child can do no possible harm by 
 opening and shutting the drawers, and he is learn- 
 ing a very great deal about the way to manage his 
 muscles and to concentrate his attention on the opera- 
 tion he undertakes. 
 
 Analyze the Child's Motives. — There are, in 
 the course of every day in an ordinary home, innu- 
 merable such exercises, which are forbidden the 
 average child, simply because his parents do not 
 take the trouble to analyze his needs. Of course, 
 it will not do to allow a child to crumple up freshly 
 
USE OF THE APPARATUS 99 
 
 ironed table linen, but we are mistaken in thinking 
 that a little child had any ''naughty" motive in 
 doing this. His desire was to handle cloth, as he 
 sees his mother handling it; to try to fold it up, 
 and spread it out, and lay it evenly over a table or 
 chair. An old dishcloth will do as well for him 
 as one's best dinner napkin. In short, one should 
 cultivate the habit of asking one's self definitely, 
 before forbidding an action to a child, "Is it really 
 bad for him to do it?" "Will he really injure any- 
 thing by doing it?" and finally (this the most impor- 
 tant), "Is there not some substitute activity which 
 I could provide for him, without the objectionable 
 features of what he is doing?" 
 
 How to Avoid Giving Negative Commands. — 
 Every mother should have a fixed rule for herself, 
 to give as few as possible merely negative com- 
 mands. She should try almost never to say merely, 
 "Don't do that," but to have the quick inventive- 
 ness to say, "You may now do this," or "You may 
 not do that; but here is something very much like 
 it which you may do." 
 
 EXERCISE TWENTY-NINE 
 
 LEABNING TO USE BOOKS AND TO HANDLE DELICATE AND 
 FEAGILE OBJECTS 
 
 Instead of forbidding a little child to touch books, 
 on the contrary, he should be given certain strongly 
 
100 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 bound, plain volumes, and allowed to handle them, 
 after the method of treating them carefully has 
 been explained to him — always in the Montessori 
 manner of brief explanations and few words. Even 
 very little children often show the greatest pleasure 
 in " playing" with a book, turning over the leaves 
 and pretending to read aloud, and their little fingers 
 learn deft care in the use of printed pages, which 
 makes it, as they grow older, no more natural for 
 them than for an adult to tear or mutilate a volume. 
 They should be allowed an occasional exercise, 
 granted as a great privilege, of handling and look- 
 ing at some delicate objects, like embroidered table 
 linen, or the contents of a jewel box. They will 
 soon learn to wash their hands with fervor and 
 to touch such fine and breakable objects with the 
 most breathless care. How else can they learn prop- 
 erly to treat fragile objects, except by handling 
 them once in a while? Of course, the concentration 
 necessary for them to be careful and cautious in 
 lifting and looking at such things is too great for 
 them to continue at it very long. After a time, the 
 box of doilies, or the fancy pins and rings, or the 
 handsomely illustrated book, should be taken away 
 and a less breakable or spoilable plaything given. 
 But it is a great mistake to treat a child, even as 
 young as three, as though he were maliciously 
 destructive, and to have him, for instance, always 
 
USE OF THE APPARATUS 101 
 
 eat from a tin plate and drink from a tin or silver 
 cup. He will acquire inevitably the mental habit 
 of carelessness in handling such objects. His tin 
 cup will not break if he drops it — why should he 
 take any pains not to drop it? The four-year-old 
 children in Rome who bring in from the school 
 kitchen big tureens of hot soup, and wash the dishes 
 after a meal, successfully, should be remembered. 
 The little child should be carefully trained, by the 
 formal Montessori apparatus, to a firm, light, unhur- 
 ried grasp on what he takes hold of, and then should 
 be trusted with this new power. 
 
 Trust the Child. — The more he is trusted, the 
 more astonished will be his mother at the extent 
 to which it is quite safe to trust him. If he has 
 not been forbidden always to touch things, there 
 will be no temptation to furtive and disobedient 
 handlings of objects, always with the fear of being 
 discovered, which makes for nervousness and mus- 
 cular uncertainty. The mother will find that a child 
 who is allowed to learn by practicing the various 
 household processes shows no desire to be the merely 
 destructive force which so many older, untrained 
 children helplessly show themselves. 
 
 If the child is provided with a goodly supply of 
 objects to handle, there is little temptation to touch 
 the few things which are rightly forbidden him. 
 I know a nervous, active little girl of four, who 
 
102 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 is allowed to play freely with all the objects on 
 her father's writing desk, with the single exception 
 of the fountain pen and the ink, which are the 
 only things she might injure. She has, at intervals, 
 amused herself for six months with the other objects 
 — -the blotter pad and the calendar, the letter weight, 
 the book rack, the letter basket — and never once, 
 in all that time, has ever suggested touching the 
 ink well, nor has ever forgotten to replace carefully 
 the objects handled. 
 
 Treat the Child as Human Being. — In general, 
 it should be remembered that the very little child, 
 who has had no opportunity to acquire bad mental 
 habits, is a member of the family and a human 
 being, as much as any of the adults, and should be 
 treated as such. He has no natural, inborn desire 
 to destroy objects, if he can learn how to handle 
 them without injuring them. He learns from touch- 
 ing, weighing, handling objects of different sizes 
 and shapes, and he should be allowed to do this, 
 unless there is a positive, serious reason against it. 
 
Torresdale House, Torresdale, Phil. First building erected in America for 
 Montessori work, at a cost of $30,000.00 
 
 
 
 
 
 " I 'S : " : - 
 
 ;•■■ ■.'"■■''' 
 
 The Junior Montessori Room, Torresdale House 
 
SUGGESTIVE EXERCISES ON NATURE 
 STUDY 
 
 Nature Study is one of the subjects which (owing 
 to conditions in Rome) Dr. Montessori has not yet 
 fully elaborated, so that whatever is done now in 
 that direction by American mothers, using her prin- 
 ciples with young children, must be largely the 
 result of their own initiative. It will be well to 
 read any good manual of Nature Study used in 
 kindergarten and the lower grades; and the State 
 Agricultural Experiment Stations of various states, 
 notably that of Cornell University, have issued some 
 suggestive pamphlets on the subject, which may be 
 secured by sending a request. 
 
 However, any mother lucky enough to be bring- 
 ing up her children in a small town or the country, 
 with a few trees and a bit of ground available, needs 
 only a jog to her inventiveness. The changing 
 seasons will provide an illustrated history which 
 needs only a running commentary to make it intel- 
 ligible to the child. 
 
 Throughout this work, the mother should bear 
 in mind the strong conviction of Dr. Montessori on 
 
 103 
 
104 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 this subject. The Dottoressa holds that the usual 
 pretty, fanciful, fairy-tale wording of information 
 about facts of Nature is harmful and misleading 
 to young children, who are quite literal-minded about 
 accepting fairies and the like. For this reason, all 
 kindergarten literature and nature study should be 
 taken with a grain of salt on the mother's part. 
 A maple leaf is not a fairy hand; a morning-glory 
 is not a tent for the fairies; the buds of the trees 
 in winter time are not " cradles" for leaves, but 
 are the germs of leaves, protected from the cold, 
 etc. The average child has naturally only too inac- 
 curate a gaze at objects. He needs no encourage- 
 ment to imagine them something different from 
 what they are. If he is to have fairies, let him 
 have them frankly imaginary, and not confuse with 
 them the actual facts of the universe. The facts 
 of nature, the growth of plants, seeds, etc., are quite 
 wonderful and fantastic enough to interest any 
 child without dressing them up in a wildly imagi- 
 nary lingo which throws his simple mind entirely 
 off the right track. I knew a child who had been 
 told that the leaf -buds in winter were the cradles 
 for the leaves, and who lost his entire faith in 
 his teachers when a winter bud was cut open before 
 him, and no leaf rolled out. It is hard to conceive 
 the entire, literal faith of little children in what 
 they are told. The greatest care should be taken 
 
SUGGESTIVE EXERCISES ON NATURE STUDY 105 
 
 not to abuse this by telling them things that are 
 not so. Things that are so are more than inter- 
 esting enough. 
 
 The growth of tree buds can be studied in the 
 house by taking a small branch from a tree in Janu- 
 ary or February and letting it open in the warm 
 air of an indoor room. This process takes place 
 so slowly that every child whose attention is called 
 to it, day after day, will have it firmly impressed 
 upon his mind. The growth of seeds can be shown 
 by planting close to the edge of an old jelly glass 
 filled with earth. The growth of the young roots 
 can be watched through the glass. A supply of 
 small pots to grow different sorts of plants is also 
 a good bit of " apparatus." The simplest varieties 
 are the best — corn, peas, grass, etc. If this is done 
 in winter, when there is not the bewildering variety 
 of vegetation outdoors, the child — even the very 
 young child — will soon come to recognize different 
 plants very readily, and to have some notion of 
 their requirements. 
 
 In summer time, a great deal is absorbed by 
 simply living close to Mother Earth, especially if 
 the parents are interested in processes of Nature. 
 The child should have, if possible, a little garden 
 of his own, which he is allowed to care for "all 
 himself," and his attention should be called to the 
 actions of ants, birds, insects, chickens, etc. He 
 
106 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 should then be allowed to observe these things, inde- 
 pendent of supervision and suggestion, using them 
 as he uses his Montessori apparatus, as a means 
 to self-education. It is a good plan, if possible, to 
 have drawn on large sheets of paper simple outlines 
 of common birds and animals, which the child fills 
 in with colors. Do not correct him if he makes a 
 pig green, or the sky pink. The fact that he is 
 thinking at all about the color of pigs and the sky 
 will make him, some day, of his own accord, notice 
 the real color, and this discovery will be of infi- 
 nitely more value to him if he has made it quite 
 himself. The difference between weeds (plants that 
 are not useful) and flowers and vegetables should 
 be explained to him, and his aid secured for the 
 campaign against weeds. He is certain to feel a 
 great self-importance at being allowed to help in 
 the care of the garden. 
 
VI 
 
 MONTESSORI GENERAL IDEAS ABOUT 
 DISCIPLINE AND OBEDIENCE 
 
 The philosophy underlying all of the Montessori 
 Method for educating young children was briefly 
 described before the apparatus was taken up. No 
 one should undertake to use the apparatus without 
 a firm grasp on that master principle, that the aim 
 of education in the case of the little child (as for 
 all of us) is not the acquisition of knowledge, but 
 the desire and capacity to acquire knowledge; and 
 further, that since the child must himself feel and 
 acquire this desire and this capacity, it is essential 
 to leave him as much opportunity as possible for 
 the exercise of his own initiative and his own inven- 
 tion. For the three-year-old, as for the ten-year- 
 old, it will do the child no good for the mother to 
 learn his lessons for him. The joy of a little child's 
 heart is in overcoming obstacles, and if his mother 
 takes all the obstacles away from him, she takes 
 the flavor out of his life. The Montessori appa- 
 ratus — the whole Montessori idea — is meant to fur- 
 nish appropriate obstacles for children of three and 
 four, and five and six years old. 
 
 107 
 
108 THE MONTESSOEI MANUAL 
 
 Since this general philosophy was stated at the 
 beginning of this Manual, there is no necessity for 
 repeating that statement here. But there is one 
 phase of the Montessori idea which needs more 
 explicit expression than it is apt to get in general 
 descriptions of the system. That is the question 
 of discipline and obedience. Those two subjects are 
 so vital and so tragically misunderstood by most of 
 us, that it may be well to go a little more deeply 
 into the discussion of them. 
 
 Intelligent Obedience. — The first thing to do, 
 in the consideration of the obedience of children, is 
 to differentiate clearly in our minds between the 
 obedience that is desirable for an animal, and that 
 which is desirable for the young of the human race. 
 "We are apt to be confused here, and to have a mis- 
 understood notion that children should obey, unques- 
 tioningly, passively, with no volition of their own, 
 as does a well-broken horse. But such unquestion- 
 ing obedience, as a moment's reflection will show, is 
 a very dangerous mental habit for a child to acquire, 
 as well as a very difficult one to force him to acquire. 
 The horse may obey unquestioningly some human 
 being; he will always have some human being set 
 in authority over him. But in a very few years, 
 as human life goes, the child will be grown; will 
 no longer be subject to the authority of parents, and 
 must in turn be able to secure the obedience of 
 
MONTESSORI IDEAS ABOUT DISCIPLINE 109 
 
 others. It is essential, therefore, that he shall begin 
 to be a human being — that is, to obey intelligently 
 —as soon as possible. What do we mean by the 
 phrase "obey intelligently?" We mean he must 
 obey, not because some one has told him to and will 
 punish him if he does not, for that is the obedience 
 exacted of the animal; but he will obey because 
 the command is a reasonable one, which his reason 
 tells him it is necessary to obey. We adults do 
 not refrain from robbing and murdering and burn- 
 ing down other people's houses simply because we 
 are afraid a policeman will arrest us if we do. We 
 refrain from doing such things because we are law- 
 abiding American citizens. Let us help to make 
 our children law-abiding American citizens, and not 
 the victims of Russian irrational tyranny. 
 
 The Basis of Pakents' Authoeity. — Our chil- 
 dren should understand that their duty is not to 
 obey our personal wishes, because we happen to be 
 their parents, but to obey eternal laws which we 
 represent and expound and enforce. To take an 
 instance, familiar to all of us, which comes into our 
 everyday experience: Children should not, any more 
 than they can help, be "messy" over their meals; 
 should not spill food on the tablecloth, or on their 
 clothes, or be unpleasant in their way of eating. 
 Why should they not do these things? Simply 
 because their parents forbid it? Not at all. Because 
 
110 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 it is their duty, as members of a community, to 
 make the common life as agreeable, as easy, and 
 as economically conducted as possible. Their par- 
 ents' duty is not at all to cry, "You do it because 
 I say so!" but to explain reasonably the underlying 
 grounds of conduct, to allow a reasonable time for 
 an understanding of the principle to reach the child's 
 brain, and then to be unflinching in their police 
 duty of enforcing obedience — obedience not to them- 
 selves, but to a law, which they must obey as well 
 as the children. If there is no such general broad 
 basis for a command given to a child, it is an unjust 
 command, and should not be issued. No child should 
 he forced to obey a whim of the parent, but only, 
 some modification of one of the general laws which 
 he will need to obey when he is grown up. 
 
 The Management of the Very Young Child 
 of Unreasoning Age. — Now, of course, it is impos- 
 sible for very little children to make this distinction. 
 Babies under eighteen months must be forced to obey, 
 if the occasion rises, as other little unreasonable ani- 
 mals are forced, by sheer physical compulsion. But, 
 as this is a very bad method of obtaining obedience, 
 the occasions for requiring obedience should be sedu- 
 lously avoided, as much as is reasonably possible, 
 during this animal-like period of the child's growth. 
 No one thinks of requiring obedience of a week-old 
 baby, and yet he is in many respects just as capable 
 
MONTESSORI IDEAS ABOUT DISCIPLINE 111 
 
 of being obedient as many a year-old child. If yon 
 need to move a week-old baby from one spot to 
 another, you do not stand off and command him 
 to move — you pick him up and carry him; and the 
 same treatment is often best for the irrational year- 
 old baby. 
 
 Parents Unconsciously Foece Children to Dis- 
 obedience. — Parents, in their great anxiety to avoid 
 that utter abomination, a disobedient child, often 
 are entirely unreasonable in their demands on very 
 young children. You would not dream of asking 
 your two-year-old son to do a sum in arithmetic; 
 and yet you tell him peremptorily to do that far 
 harder thing, "Do keep still for a minute!" He 
 cannot keep still for a minute at that age, and to 
 issue that command to him means simply that you 
 yourself are initiating him into the meaning of dis- 
 obedience. In general, then, with very young chil- 
 dren, the method of procedure should be: 
 
 First. — To so arrange his life that there shall 
 be few needs to issue commands. A child who is 
 kept quietly at home, playing with objects designed 
 for his use, who is not "shown off" to adults, who 
 is not forced into such cruel situations as enforced 
 participation in adult life, like traveling on the 
 cars, going to church, or to shops, or on the street 
 cars, or asked to entertain a company of idle elders, 
 will rarely be insubordinate, or think of such a thing 
 
112 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 as disobeying, for the simple reason that the things 
 asked of him are within his capacity to do. On the 
 rare occasion when such a crisis arises, it is best 
 frankly to treat the little creature like a speechless 
 animal, which he is, and enforce obedience to some- 
 thing necessary. But this should, in any ordinary 
 normal child's life, happen not more than once or 
 twice up to his second year. 
 
 Second. — As soon as he begins to be able to 
 understand simple statements, the reason for various 
 commands given him should be explained to him. 
 One result of this rule is apt to be that fewer com- 
 mands are given, as they are often seen to rest upon 
 utterly unreasonable grounds. The child should be 
 trained, first, to obey promptly, and then to expect 
 an explanation of the action. In most cases this 
 careful clarifying in his mind of the grounds for 
 action, results in a most satisfactory regime of reason- 
 ableness. Suppose, for instance, that a child is seen 
 climbing upon a chair before the sideboard in the 
 dining-room. His mother should not call out to 
 him simply, "Come away from there!" but should 
 explain to him that it is dangerous for him to handle 
 the glasses, standing in rows on the top, because 
 he would be apt to break them. If the child then 
 asks to be allowed to play with the spoons in the 
 drawer, there is no reasonable grounds for refusing 
 that request. He has made a concession, and has 
 
MONTESSORI IDEAS ABOUT DISCIPLINE 113 
 
 learned self-control and obedience in refraining 
 from touching the glasses, and his mother has, if 
 she is alert-minded enough to learn a lesson, taken 
 note that her command, "Come away from there!" 
 was not exactly fitted to the case. She should have 
 analyzed the situation more acutely, and see that 
 she need not forbid a harmless amusement to the 
 child because it happened to be in proximity to a 
 potentially harmful one. Such frank explanation 
 and mutual concession are most valuable and vital 
 elements in the harmonious relations of parent and 
 child, and do more than anything else to prevent 
 that bitter rebellion against authority which so often 
 saddens the adolescence of children with strong wills 
 and a keen sense of justice. 
 
 Third. — The mother should make the most care- 
 ful distinction between the conscious, willful action 
 of a child, and the sort of wild irritability which 
 results in "naughty" actions, but which is the result 
 itself of nervous fatigue, due to injudicious treat- 
 ment. In the Casa dei Bambini, on the very rare 
 occasions when a child is "naughty," he is treated 
 as a "sick" child; is put off in a quiet corner of 
 the room, allowed all the toys he wishes to play 
 with, is soothed and petted, allowed everything but 
 (this is the important point) to play with the other 
 children. In a short time this reduces the most 
 unruly child to submission. But in an ordinary 
 
114 THE MONTESSORT MANUAL 
 
 home, with only two or three children, the " naughty" 
 child is not privileged, like the Italian child in the 
 Montessori school, to see constantly before him the 
 precious example of the orderly, peaceable, indus- 
 trious behavior of thirty other children. The prin- 
 ciple, however, holds. Nine times out of ten, the 
 " naughty" child is, in all sober reality, a sick child, 
 or at least a very tired child. It is hard for adults 
 to realize what a nervous strain it is, for instance, 
 for a child of three to see strange faces for a few 
 hours. I have known several cases of children, even 
 as old as four and five, who were reduced to what 
 was practically nervous hysteria by a trip down 
 town with an adult, going in the street cars, and 
 being taken to several shops. The mothers of these 
 children were in despair over their naughty and 
 turbulent dispositions, as no amount of disciplining 
 did the least good. Of course, it did not. The 
 child's sensitive nerves were, for the time being, in 
 such a tense, unnatural state of strain that the 
 child, for all practical purposes, was insane. When 
 another regime was adopted, of unvarying quiet for 
 the child, of a tranquil, peaceful routine, never 
 changed, with few persons in it, and plenty of sleep, 
 regularly taken, the " naughty" dispositions van- 
 ished like magic, and sweet-tempered, loving, tract- 
 able little children proved that the trouble had been 
 purely physical and nervous. 
 
MONTESSORI IDEAS ABOUT DISCIPLINE 115 
 
 Now, this means in many ways quite a sacrifice 
 on the part of the mother. In most cases, if she 
 cannot take the children with her, on shopping and 
 pleasure excursions, she is obliged to stay at home 
 with them. Sometimes, however, even where there 
 is no grandmother or aunt who can be left for a 
 few hours with the little ones, an arrangement can 
 be made with a neighbor who also has little chil- 
 dren, to " trade" with her, to take care of her chil- 
 dren as well as your own for one afternoon, on 
 condition that she do the same for you. If neither 
 of these are possible, then the mother, if she is 
 conscientious and really wishes to do the best pos- 
 sible for her children, must simply resign herself 
 to a very quiet life during their early childhood. 
 She can reflect that she may expect, under ordinary 
 circumstances, to live to be seventy or more years 
 old, and that to give up five or even eight years of 
 all that time to the care of her little children is 
 not a large proportion of her life. And she will 
 be more than repaid, in the ease of " managing" 
 her children, if she can secure for them a perfectly 
 regular, even, tranquil life, with absolutely no adult 
 excitements. She should keep before her mind the 
 perfectly happy, perfectly good children in the 
 Roman Casa dei Bambini, who never, never, have 
 a change, who know no other life than the round 
 of work and fun which is specially adapted to them. 
 
116 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 If such a regime is rigorously adhered to, in the 
 ordinary family, ninety-nine per cent of the diffi- 
 culty of disciplining little children would be entirely 
 obviated. They learn to obey unconsciously, because 
 they are never asked to exercise their will-power 
 and self-control, when their sensitive little nerves 
 are at the breaking point from fatigue and excite- 
 ment. It is, of course, impossible absolutely to 
 attain this ideal in the ordinary American family. 
 There are sure to be cousins, and aunts, and uncles, 
 and even grandmothers and grandfathers, little in 
 sympathy with this rational and merciful method 
 of treating little children — people who consider that 
 part of a child's duty is to amuse and entertain its 
 elders — people who say, "Oh, what's the good of 
 having a child, if you can't have fun with it*?" 
 They are the sort of people who, fifteen years ago, 
 used to insist upon tossing up and down a new- 
 born baby, shaking bright-colored objects before its 
 eyes, and generally driving it to nervous prostra- 
 tion; whereupon they left the house, and the par- 
 ents were obliged to nurse the child over the almost 
 inevitable fit of indigestion and "nerves" which fol- 
 lowed. Such people now are the ones who like to 
 make a three-year-old child "show off" and say 
 "funny things." They still leave the parents to 
 bear the brunt of the ensuing nervous attack. 
 
MONTESSORI IDEAS ABOUT DISCIPLINE 117 
 
 Should Not Discipline or Try to Reason with 
 A Child When Nervously Excited. — The only thing 
 the mother can do in such a case is to remember 
 that the child is not himself when nervously excited. 
 There is no use trying to "reason" with him, or to 
 discipline him, or arouse his better nature. For 
 the moment he has no better nature! He is nothing 
 but jangled nerves. A tired or excited young child 
 should never be asked to exercise self-control; there 
 should be no occasion for it. The only thing to do 
 with him is to quiet him as soon as possible by 
 purely physical means. If he is hungry, get him 
 something, very easily digested, to eat; slip off his 
 clothing, give him a warm bath, if possible, and 
 lay him down in a comfortable bed, in a room not 
 too light, with plenty of fresh air. When he has 
 slept and rested, he will have "come to himself,' ' 
 and the necessity for punishment will be past. He 
 will, as he always does when he is in good physical 
 condition, desire to be a good child. There will 
 be something there for the mother to work with. 
 Even if he has had no special excitement, there may 
 be times, in the life of an especially nervous child, 
 when his vitality is at a low ebb, and the regular 
 routine of life is too much for him. If he shows 
 signs of nervous irritability, snarling and snapping, 
 or crying at nothing, he should never be reproved. 
 
118 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 He should be put to bed, not at all as a punishment, 
 but with the tenderest affection and the most solemn 
 pity for the poor little sensitive creature. If there 
 is in this prescription of rest for nervous fret, no 
 hint of punishment, or shame, the child will not 
 resent it, but will soon learn to yield himself up 
 to the soothing influence. 
 
 How to Avoid a "Brain-Storm." — If, when 
 several little children are playing together, the 
 mother hears one begin to speak in a loud, excited 
 voice, and to have nervous, disorganized motions, 
 such as knocking the playthings about, she should 
 come up quietly to the group and remark calmly 
 that " Johnny is evidently too tired to play any 
 longer. He'd better go and rest for a time, until 
 he feels better." Then he is led away, very gently. 
 There should be the utmost care not to seem to 
 use this as a chastisement. His face and hands 
 should be washed in cool water (there is very apt 
 to be a slight fever present when nervous irrita- 
 bility sets in), his clothing loosened, and he himself 
 laid on a bed in a quiet room. This treatment has, 
 in addition to the invaluable physical effect, a very 
 strong moral one. The gentleness, the peace of 
 the room, the utter isolation, the inaction — there 
 seems nothing left for the child to battle with, noth- 
 ing for his " naughtiness" to feed upon. In fami- 
 lies where this humane regime is in force, I have 
 
MONTESSORI IDEAS ABOUT DISCIPLINE 119 
 
 known instances of children of four and five, who 
 have begun to be self conscious and reasonable, who 
 come to their mothers and ask to be put to bed for 
 half an hour, because they "are beginning to feel 
 naughty." Children do not enjoy the miserable, 
 unhappy excitement of being naughty, no matter 
 what our misunderstanding reading of them may 
 seem to indicate. And if they have had a fair 
 experience of a sure escape from the " brain-storm' ' 
 of a fit of insubordination, they are very apt to 
 resort to it of their own accord. If it is evident 
 that the child cannot be sleepy, for instance, only 
 a short time after a nap, another calming expedi- 
 ent is to take him gently away from the others to 
 a quiet place outdoors, where he is left to play in 
 solitary proximity to the bosom of Mother Earth. 
 
 But of course this remedy cannot be applied, if 
 the nervous fit comes on while the mother is pric- 
 ing laces in a department store and the child hang- 
 ing to her skirts, or if they are at an "amusement 
 park," with bands braying and tooting about them, 
 and crowds of excited pleasure seekers noisily 
 going their way. 
 
 This is another reason for never taking children 
 away from the quiet home life, except to some 
 equally quiet spot out-of-doors. 
 
 This rule may be relaxed, of course, as the chil- 
 dren grow older, but it should be relaxed very 
 
120 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 gradually, with the fewest possible breaks in the 
 tranquil and unchanging life. 
 
 Fourth. — Necessity for Constant Activity in 
 Eaely Childhood. — The final lesson we American 
 mothers have to learn from Dr. Montessori and 
 her wonderful success with the training of little 
 children, is the lesson of positiveness, as opposed 
 to negativeness in their lives. The craving for 
 constant, unceasing activity in little children is 
 intense. This is a normal and blessed instinct of 
 theirs, which does more than anything to develop 
 them. And the mother should constantly bear it 
 in mind. Her attitude towards her little child 
 should be as little negative as may be; she should 
 set her grown-up wits incessantly to work to devise 
 wise, harmless and beneficial actions for the child, 
 not merely to forbid him unwise and harmful ones. 
 And here the Montessori apparatus is of incalcu- 
 lable value. It caters with scientific ingenuity to 
 the need for action of the small child, and relieves 
 the mother's inexperienced brain of a great part 
 of the strain of inventing suitable exercises for chil- 
 dren under six or seven. The child can be, to a 
 large extent, turned loose with the Montessori appa- 
 ratus, with the certainty that he will not hurt him- 
 self or anything else, and that he is learning some- 
 thing. 
 
 Montessoei Apparatus Not Enough. — But the 
 
MONTESSORI IDEAS ABOUT DISCIPLINE 121 
 
 Montessori apparatus, valuable as it is, is not 
 enough. As has been said many times in the pre- 
 ceding pages, the mother's mind must be alert and 
 ingenious to supplement it as the child grows. For 
 instance, blunt pointed scissors and plenty of paper 
 to cut are as indispensable as the geometric insets. 
 Constant exercises in the occupations of every-day 
 life, such as washing and wiping toy dishes and 
 setting a small table, sweeping the floor with a 
 small broom, learning to dust, etc., are as necessary 
 as the sandpaper letters. If the children are ini- 
 tiated into these exercises young enough, before 
 their natural instinct for action and for helpful 
 action has been atrophied by the customary idling 
 in early childhood, the mother will find the utmost 
 eagerness for such activities, and not at all the lazy, 
 shirking attitude towards them so frequently seen 
 in older children, who did not have proper train- 
 ing in their early life. 
 
 Habit of Obedience a Slow Growth. — Does all 
 this seem a long way from the question of obedi- 
 ence? It is not in the least. For the question 
 of obedience in the young children is largely con- 
 cerned with other matters than obedience, or to put 
 it differently, with indirect means of attaining 
 obedience. Obedience for the moment can always be 
 attained directly by the brutal method of using 
 force, because the adult is always stronger than 
 
122 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 the little child. But, of course, obedience of this 
 sort lasts exactly as long as the force can and is 
 applied, which means an ungoverned adolescence 
 for the child, and a childhood full of anger and 
 storms of rebellion. 
 
 The other kind of obedience, the right kind, 
 can be attained only very gradually, for it is at 
 least as difficult an achievement as learning the 
 multiplication table. The child needs to begin with 
 very small beginnings in this as in any other im- 
 portant activity of his life, to be asked in early 
 childhood to obey as seldom as possible, because his 
 life is rightly and carefully suited to his needs; to 
 have the reason for obedience; the real, underly- 
 ing philosophic reason explained to him as soon as 
 possible and as often as necessary; never to be 
 asked or expected to obey when he is having what 
 amounts to a fit of hysteria; and, finally, to have 
 his life so filled with interesting, profitable and 
 entertaining occupations that the question of obedi- 
 ence enters into it very little. Through the daily 
 experience of living a well-ordered, industrious, pur- 
 poseful life, he learns, unconsciously the joys of 
 peace and tranquillity, and he comes to be as 
 unwilling to wreck these by insubordination as his 
 mother is unwilling to have him. Like any other 
 good habit, obedience cannot come from one or two 
 violent efforts. It must come from a long, long 
 
MONTESSORI IDEAS ABOUT DISCIPLINE 123 
 
 continuance in the right conditions. And to secure 
 these " right conditions" the Montessori apparatus, 
 method and philosophy are the most potent means 
 as yet discovered. 
 
 VII 
 
 SOME OF THE QUESTIONS THAT ARE 
 ANSWERED 
 
 "Who is Dr. Montessori? 16 
 
 What facts about children did she rediscover? 17 
 
 What is the single most important principle of her Method ? 18 
 What three principles may be said to sum up the Method ? 19 
 
 On what principles can children learn without detailed instruc- 
 tion? 21 
 Why should the five senses be carefully and directly trained ? 23 
 What is a Casa dei Bambini ? 25 
 Will little children learn useful things if not forced to stop 
 
 playing? 26 
 
 Why is spontaneous attention better than forced attention? 27 
 Is it well to help the child with his Montessori problems ? 
 
 28, 29, 30, 32 
 Do little children as a rule learn best through the eyes or 
 
 through the fingers? 33 
 
 What are some of the essentials for teaching system and 
 
 order? 35, 36, 82 
 
 Why should a child learn to dress and feed himself as early in 
 
 life as possible ? 37 
 
 Why should the little child not be hurried? 39 
 
 Why is a very large rag doll to be especially valued as a play- 
 thing? ' 40 
 Should little children be allowed to handle or play with small 
 
 objects? 38 
 
 How can children be taught to "see with the fingers " ? 34 
 
 What are some of the advantages of learning to do things by 
 
 touch rather than by sight ? 35 
 
 Does Montessori freedom for the child mean upsetting all or- 
 der in the household or schoolroom? 29 
 Why the child needs training in bodily poise and how this can 
 be obtained. 67, 68, 69 
 
124 THE MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 Should children be allowed to play with water ? How ? Why ? 70 
 Should little children do housework ? How? 71,72 
 
 How should the alphabet be taught ? 73 
 
 What are the three signs by which a Montessori mother or 
 teacher can tell when the child is nearly ready for the 
 explosion into writing? 78 
 
 Should a little child have pets of his own ? 81 
 
 What is meant by a " Montessori scheme of existence ' ' for lit- 
 tle children? 82 
 Should a child's life have some unvaryingly regular events? 83 
 Under what conditions do little children take an interest in 
 
 arithmetic? 84, 85, 86 
 
 How should the numbers be taught? 87 
 
 How can arithmetic be taught by means of games? 88 
 
 How can the Montessori game of "Making the Silence" be 
 
 duplicated in the home? 95 
 
 Why should a child practice exercises in immobility? 96 
 
 Why should a child 's actions about the house be as free as pos- 
 sible? 97,98 
 How can ordinary incidents in home life be turned into Mon- 
 tessori exercises? 
 Should little children be allowed to play with books? With 
 delicate breakable objects? Under what conditions? 
 Why? 100 
 Should a little child use a tin, a silver or a china cup ? 101 
 
 ABOUT OBEDIENCE AND HOW IT IS OBTAINED 
 
 What should a mother always add to the command "Don't do 
 
 that"? 112 
 
 Why should the little child be trusted as much as possible ? 102 
 Should a child be taught to obey as is an animal? 108 
 
 Should children be forced to obey commands based on personal 
 
 wishes of their parents ? 109 
 
 Why should children always feel that they are obeying a law, 
 
 not an adult's whim? 110 
 
 How can unreasonable commands be avoided ? 99 
 
 Under what general conditions of life is the question of obedi- 
 ence simplified? 108, 109 
 Why is there need for clear thinking in issuing commands for 
 
 children? 110 
 
 Under what conditions are ' ' naughty ' ' actions not punishable ? 98 
 Why is it important that the child's natural impulse to see and 
 
 to do things should not be suppressed ? 97 
 
MONTESSORI IDEAS ABOUT DISCIPLINE 125 
 
 How does the Casa dei Bambini inculcate absolutely quiet 
 
 life for young children? 115 
 
 How treat a nervously exhausted child who is acting as if it 
 
 were naughty? 114 
 
 How to avoid children 's brain storms ? 118 
 
 Why do children seem to enjoy being naughty? 119 
 
 Why should little children share in adult life and pleasures as 
 
 little as possible? 115 
 
 Should the mother's attitude toward the child ever be purely 
 
 negative ? 120 
 
 Why is enforced unreasoning obedience fatal to real growth ? 121 
 How can the right kind of obedience be obtained by little 
 
 effort? 122 
 
 ABOUT DIDACTIC MATERIALS 
 
 What are the aims of the Montessori Apparatus? 47 
 
 What precaution should be taken to heart by everyone using 
 
 the apparatus ? 24 
 
 What is the best course to follow when just beginning the use 
 
 of the Montessori materials? 31 
 
 Has a mother at home any advantage of the Montessori prin- 
 ciples over the best teachers ? 30 
 In which direction should all Montessori "touching" exercises 
 
 betaken? Why? 35,48 
 
 If the child is not interested in a piece of apparatus or an exer- 
 cise, should he be coaxed or induced to go on with it ? 
 
 36, 41, 48, 57, 85 
 What are the two special uses of the buttoning frames ? 35 
 
 How shall a child be introduced to the Tower Blocks ? 42 
 
 What should be done with the first used pieces of the Montes- 
 sori apparatus when new pieces are brought out ? 41 
 Why should Montessori apparatus be used only for the purpose 
 
 for which it was intended? 45 
 
 What games can be played with the Fabric Squares ? 50 
 
 How can the child be taught the names and qualities of other 
 
 fabrics than those in the Montessori apparatus? 52 
 
 What games are good for the sense of hearing? 53, 54 
 
 What is the use of the Plane Geometric Insets ? 55 
 
 What games can be played to sharpen the sense of color ? 64 
 
 Why are the Sandpaper Letters so necessary? 73, 74 
 
 What games can be played with the Alphabet? 75 
 
 What are some simple home pieces and furnishings that will 
 supplement and substitute for the Montessori ? 90 
 
INDEX TO MONTESSORI MANUAL 
 
 Arbitrary classification of school- 
 children undesirable, 13. 
 Advantage of blindfold exercises, 57, 
 
 58. 
 Avoiding "brain-storms," 118. 
 Activity an essential of child-life, 68. 
 Beginning of habit of obedience, 112, 
 
 121 ff. 
 Child's share in life of the home, 71, 
 
 81 ff, 97 ff. 
 Dr. Montessori's training, 17. 
 Description of Casa dei Bambini, 
 
 25 ff. 
 Does ordinary modern education do 
 
 more harm than good? 10. 
 Direction in which "touching exer- 
 cises" should always be taken 48, 
 
 56. 
 Disadvantages of the mother at home 
 
 compared to Montessori Directress, 
 
 79, 80. 
 Difficulties of English spelling, 76. 
 Discipline and Obedience, 107 ff. 
 Gymnastic exercises, 67 ff. 
 How the bright child is kept back by 
 
 ordinary systems of education, 12, 
 
 13. 
 Habits of neatness and order a 
 
 part of Montessori training, 36, 37. 
 How young a child should we expect 
 
 to obey orders? 110. 
 Home-made exercises, 38, 40, 70, 98, 
 
 99, 100, 121. 
 Importance of training senses, 23. 
 Montessori qualities in a child, 31. 
 Need for great quiet and regularity 
 
 in the child-life, 63, 111, 113. 114 ff. 
 Nature Study, 103 ff. 
 Purpose of Montessori apparatus, 23, 
 
 47. 
 Some advantages of the mother at 
 
 home over the Montessori Direct- 
 ress, 30. 
 
 Self-education a vital necessity, 32, 
 
 42. 
 Silence training, 93 ff. 
 Spontaneity an essential, 70, 106. 
 Trust of the child, 101. 
 Teaching self-control, 96 ff. 
 Tired child not a "naughty" child, 
 
 113, 117, 119. 
 Teaching the use of sense of touch, 
 
 33. 
 Underlying idea of Montessori 
 
 Method, 19, 20, 21, 24. 
 Vicious habit of passivity, 14. 
 Value of free-will over enforced at- 
 tention to studv, 27, 48, 57, 63, 
 
 79, 85. 
 "What should education do? 10. 
 Waste of time in average systems of 
 
 education, 11, 12. 
 Water-play, 70. 
 
 Why should parents be obeyed? 109. 
 Use of apparatus — 
 
 Arithmetic for young children, 
 83 ff, 88 ff. 
 
 Buttoning frames, 35; Exercises 
 supplementary to, 40. 
 
 Block Tower, 41, 43. 
 
 Broad Stair, 43. 
 
 Beginning use of pencil, 61, 62. 
 
 Long Stair, 45. 
 
 Movable alphabet, 75 ff, 91, 92. 
 
 Outlines of plane insets, 59. 
 
 Plane geometric insets, 55. 
 
 Review exercises with apparatus, 77. 
 
 Sandpaper board, 47, 49. 
 
 Sandpaper alphabet, 73 f 
 
 Sandpaper numbers, 87, 91. 
 
 Solid geometric insets, 31; supple- 
 mentary exercises to, 38. 
 
 Textile exercises with fabrics, 50. 
 
 Tactile exercises with solids, 52. 
 
 Training sense of hearing, 53. 
 
 Training the eye, 64 ff. 
 Questions answered, 124. 
 
 126 
 
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