Refining Movement

"Of itself movement is something unrefined, but its value increases when one attempts to perfect it. Hands, for example, are then no longer washed simply to make them clean, but in order to be able to wash them perfectly. When hands are washed in this manner, they are not only clean but the child himself becomes more skilled and acquires a certain refinement which sets him above a child with unwashed hands."

Maria Montessori, Discovery of the Child p 87

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