Discoveries about child

  Elaborate the discoveries made by Dr. Maria Montessori by observing the child.

Dr. Maria Montessori explained her way of developing pedagogical stuff is that she observed children find what they need and cater to their requirements, giving them the opportunity to understand and learn things by having hands-on experience. While doing so she discovered some amazing traits of children which are listed below.

1. Children prefer academic material over toys: Once a group of women donated a collection of lovely and expensive toys to her first school but she found that no matter how lovely the toys are children are more inclined to the learning material that can engage them in some constructive activity.
2. Inner need for Freedom and Constructive Work: Children don’t want to have time-constrained if a certain activity interests them. She observed it while giving them learning material for some time but they want to go on using the same material for a longer period which builds their concentration and focus.
3. Ability to select activities: Just like children don’t want to have time constraints once they enjoy a certain activity, they also want to have freedom of choice to select the activity to work with. So Dr. Maria concluded that children naturally love the freedom of choice and freedom of choice.

In her first Casa Dei Bambini, she observed that when they are given the freedom they naturally exhibit discipline instead of an adult imposing rules on them.

4. Naturally motivated: If given the proper material that suits their developmental age and interests them, children get naturally motivated to the educational material driven by their curiosity and pleasure, and for that, they don’t need a reward to get motivated.
5. Children need order:  Dr. Maria observed that a child’s mind is focused on the development and inner construction of his intellect and personality. So in order to build disciplined personality adults around them have to practice what they preach and order in their surroundings. Therefore physically there should be a place for everything and everything should be kept at its place. Likewise, as they are taught to tell the truth, there must not be contradictions by adults at any time, otherwise,      it disturbs them emotionally.
6. Learning requires concentration: Dr. Maria found that for true learning children need to concentrate just like yogis emphasize meditation. For concentration, the educational material first sparks interest in children, as they get interested, they want to do that thing repeatedly with no time limit which improves their focus, and focus and concentration helps in inner construction.
7. Purposeful activities lead to normalization: Children sometimes have a developmental error due to a lack of rightful conditions. Dr. Maria found that it can be rectified by allowing children to work persistently with purposeful activities.
8. Diverse activities: In order to develop children fully they need stimulation and appropriate activities in multiple fields ranging from sensorial exercises to exercises for practical life and also in the field of mathematics, arts and culture. The magic of her wide-ranging materials and activities can still be witnessed in any Montessori classroom.
9. Naturally well behaved:  Unlike the common notion that children are destructive, disorderly, and stubborn Dr. Maria observed that in a well-planned setup that caters to their needs and given the freedom of time and choice they show orderly, responsible, and caring behavior.
10. Children want to become independent: Children want to do all things on their own so Dr. Maria observed that most parents or adults around children snatch their liberty and lend unnecessary support. But in Montessori classrooms, the rule is to help children only to let them do it on their own.
11. Environmental engineering: Children need help because the world around them is oversized for them, from toilet stuff to kitchen material which is difficult for children to handle so Dr. Maria tailored her classroom to child-sized things that help children to perform better develop much faster.
12. Children like to be treated respectfully:  Children are small humans and just like other humans they want to be treated respectfully which leads to a confident child and self-esteem.

Giving them respect, love and faith also make them real obedient not the obedience that comes out of fear or in greed of reward.

13. Children are underestimated: In the beginning, she was of opinion that for children age 3-6 formal education like reading writing is unnecessary but on the insistence of their parents she started withholding pencils and tracing letters and learning phonics but to her amazement, they become eager and even show interest in subjects that are considered too high for them like mathematics geography and science.