| It is important that children stay till their 5th year, to benefit from the method. Children who stay on till 7 or older will be able to progress through the material going from the concrete to the abstract. They use given individualised instruction in the concrete. The elementary child is ready to explore culture - the sciences, the arts, the universe. He/she has acquired enough basic reading and writing skills to initiate research into the profound questions and interests emerging at this age. Why repeat skills and drill when the child clamours for more enrichment? The Montessori child has been exposed to cognitive development for 3 years and he/she is ready for new stimuli. |
| A small school is like a family; children must make an effort to get along with each other. The social life is enriched by shared work, ideas and free movement and verbalisation. Because of the mixed age group, there is a wider programme for varied levels and wider options for the children’s individual pace. |
| Each stage of the child prepares for the next. The 3-year-old learns to care for him/herself - the 6-year-old takes imaginative steps beyond his environment and explores his/her universe. This sensitive period for imagination is not present in the younger child. The order, which is the basis for the young child, is on a new level for the older child - the abstraction. The older child wants facts about his/her world and to classify it. The classroom introduces palaeontology, zoology, botany, mineralogy, geology, physics, and chemistry. At first language was learning the name of things, now it defines the relationship between acts, including moral questions. Language expresses the conscious development of the human mind and ability to reason. |
“My vision of the future is no longer people taking exams and proceeding then on that certification, but of individuals passing from one stage of independence to a higher, by means of their own activity through their own effort of will, which constitutes the inner evolution of the individual.”
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