A Glossary of a few Montessori Terms

The Absorbent Mind: This is the way Montessori describes the minds of young children.

Their minds are like sponges soaking up information from their environment.

Just think about how much a child learns I the early years: how to talk, walk, understand social cues and relationships, objects, laws of nature (like gravity), and even the rudiments of reading. Much of this learning is unconscious because the brains of young children have been hard-wired to absorb information automatically and effortlessly

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Control of Error: Children make mistakes as they learn. Maria Montessori recognized that it was vitally important the children not lose motivation or become discouraged with mistakes occur. So into each didactic material she built in a way for the child to recognize if his work was done correctly or not, along with the ability to make it right—a control of error. As a result, no one criticizes his error or circles his mistakes with a bit red pencil for the entire world to see. If a child is putting the lids on bottles and one top does not fit, he knows he’s using the wrong sized lid without having to be told. 

Cycles of Activity: Allowing a child to become deeply engaged in an activity is crucial for learning. In a Montessori Classroom, a child is never interrupted during the work period (the time the child is focused on working with a material). For a normalized child, the cycle of activity is usually about one and half hours in length or even longer.

The basic concept behind the cycle of activity is that is allows the child to become absorbed in and complete the task to satisfaction. Children who complete the cycle of activity emerge feeling happy and refreshed because, as Maria Montessori said: “A child who concentrates is a happy child.”

Didactic Materials: Montessori didactic materials are designed to be aesthetically pleasing and to teach through the senses. The child progresses through the curriculum by repeatedly handling and manipulating these materials. Each one is scientifically designed to teach one concept only. There is also a specific order in which the materials are presented to the child: for instance, in the geography area the sandpaper globe showing the difference between land and water is presented first. The globe of the world showing the continents is shown second. Then a round blue ball of clay is cut in half and pressed flat to explain how we arrive at a map. Finally, these unique didactic materials (you won’t find them anywhere except a Montessori classroom) have

a control of error build right into them.

Individual Liberty-Children have the ability to move around and make choices about which materials they will use, where they will use the material and when they will do a job.  Individual Liberty is not to be confused with "license" which is the ability to behave anyway they please or to choose to not work.