Human Creativity

For children of the age of five or six, the work of the potter's wheel begins. But what most delights the children is the work of building a wall with little bricks, and seeing a little house, the fruit of their own hands, rise in the vicinity of the ground in which are growing plants, also cultivated by them. Thus the age of childhood epitomises the principal primitive labours of humanity, when the human race, changing from the nomadic to the stable condition, demanded of the earth its fruit, built itself shelter, and devised vases to cook the foods yielded by the fertile earth.

Maria Montessori, The Montessori Method p 166

Ideas

"Children do not judge whether something is good or bad, ugly or beautiful, nice or not. They judge just and beautiful what you consider just and beautiful, you who are their group?"

Mario M. Montessori, The Human Tendencies and Montessori Education, p 44

Follow the Interests of the Child

"The child should love everything that he learns, for his mental and emotional growths are linked. Whatever is presented to him must be made beautiful and clear, striking his imagination. Once this love has been kindled, all problems confronting the educationist will disappear."

Maria Montessori, To Educate the Human Potential, p 25

Permanence

"The old spiritual values are being attacked, the new ideologies are struggling against them and against each other: nothing seems sure or permanent. It is bad enough for us, adults, who are already set in our ideas, but how much more difficult it is for most of the children! No matter how many psychologists come to their help - if conditions remain as they are, and if we educators do nothing to make it possible for the child to build for himself a basic behaviour by incarnating the stable realities hidden under the chaotic appearance, he will not find it easy to grow feeling confident in life."

Mario M. Montessori, The Human Tendencies and Montessori Education, p 17