Preparation

"One might say that all their previous  education is a preparation for the first stages of essential culture - writing, reading, and number - and that knowledge comes as an easy, spontaneous, and logical consequence of the preparation - that it is in fact its natural conclusion."

Maria Montessori, Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook p 138

Gaining Impressions

A child does not have the same feeling for order that we do. Experience has made us indifferent. But a child is poor and in the process of gaining impressions. He starts from nothing and feels the fatigue of creation.

Maria Montessori, The Secret of Childhood, p 58

Builder of Man

 

The child is not an empty being who owes whatever he knows to us who have filled him up with it. No, the child is the builder of man. There is no man existing who has not been formed by the child he once was. In order to form a man great powers are necessary and these powers are possessed only by the child.

Maria Montessori, The Absorbent Mind, p 19

Graduating to the conscious

"Little by little the child becomes conscious of all the things, these form his consciousness. And so we see the path followed by the child. He acquires all unconsciously, gradually passing from unconscious to conscious, following a path of pleasure and love."

Maria Montessori, The Absorbent Mind, p36

Acquisition of Consciousness

"This consciousness seems to us a great acquisition. To become conscious; to acquire a human mind! But we pay for it. Because as soon as we become conscious, every new acquisition causes hard work and fatigue."

Maria Montessori, The Absorbent Mind, p 37