finished, hastily, a month before and with crooked lines, now held him
concentrated for an hour, and was completed with exquisite neatness and
exact contour of line. At the midday meal of the children Andrea did
not, as formerly, beg to be served first, nor did he open his little
green basket of luncheon before the other children. It was as if the
slow-growing bulb which was working its sure way up through the bare
ground to the sun had its counterpart in the unfolding root of patience
it had planted in the heart of a little child.
After a little, the winter melted into a spring of yellow lilies and long
sunny noons and laughter at all the gray street corners. Andrea came
earlier than the other little ones to the Children’s House each morning,
that he might spend a half hour with his little green watering pot in the
garden. He met Bruno and Piccola with an air of assurance that set him
apart from them. He held his head very high in those days because of
realized hope which he had made his own.
“Andrea is our little gardener,” the children said to each other,
watching his triumph.
Then came a visitor’s morning at the Children’s House of the Via Giusti
Convent. The children’s greatest happiness was to welcome these grown-up
friends who came to learn of the little ones the truths of life. Among
the throng of students, tourists, curiosity seekers, earnest thinkers, a
woman whom the children knew entered and slipped into a waiting chair.
She had been during the winter a frequent visitor, quiet, sympathetic,
with deep, smiling eyes. Then she had not come to the Children’s House
for many days.
But they remembered her still. As flowers turn to meet the sun, they
twined about her, feeling her soft, strong hands, touching with eager
finger tips the dull, clinging garment that draped her. Ah, they drew
back, consulting together in little questioning groups.
“She wears now a black dress.”
“Her eyes are full of sorrow,” they said.
“The Signorina tells us that, now, she has no _madre_.”
Andrea, apart from the others, listened, sympathetic, wondering. Sorrow
should be replaced by happiness, of this he was quite sure. Was not the
most unhappy child in the Children’s House the one most loved, most
helped by his Signorina? Had he anything to offer this friend that would
give her joy? He ran to her, grasped her hand in his; dragged her from
her chair, across the threshold, into a luring little green path dented
with many child footprints.
“See!” he exclaimed. “I waited.”
Where Andrea had laid away his hope, a tall, straight stalk of heavily
odorous lily bloom pointed skyward. The earth that it had scattered in
its bulb-bursting still surrounded the strong, green stalk. It was a
chalice of the spring, a symbol of life that is eternal.
“I planted it and I waited,” Andrea repeated. “All the children waited
with me.
“It blooms,” he finished, laughing up into the joyful eyes that smiled
back, comforted, into his.
Life is a phenomenon in which no force is wasted and out of whose
apparent death there continually confronts us the wonder of new life.
Some of us are blind to the lessons Nature teaches, but little children
may be led to _feel_ nature facts that spell for them faith and hope and
sympathy for all time.
Dr. Montessori tells us the place of nature in education. We will put
the planting and tending of little gardens, which are the child’s own,
above the place which such work has held, formerly, as a part of manual
education. We will make gardening a means of leading our little ones to
_observe_ the phenomena of life, to be _patient_ in waiting for that life
to manifest itself, and to be very sure in the hope that fruition will
come.
Does _your_ little Andrea, your child who has come to you with such
a divine curiosity about life and so quick a sense to feel it, have
a chance to be, himself, a part of the miracle by helping something
to grow? To plant a seed, to surround it with all the best conditions
for growth, to tend it, to wait for its flowerings—this is Montessori
development possible for any child.
[Illustration: The loving care of a dumb animal results in child
sympathy.]
Many of us feel that we are bringing our little ones into a nearness with
nature when we show them beautiful pictures of flowers, lead them to
exquisite gardens in which they must not pick the flowers, or take them
to walk in our parks. This is not making nature a force in the life of a
child as Dr. Montessori would have us. Children must _touch_ and _feel_
and _act_ to know. The flower that is too beautiful for little fingers to
gracefully pick and give to a friend as an offering of love should have
no place in our gardens. The grass that is too soft to bear the prints of
little feet is not the right kind of grass for an American park.
To plant a bean in a clay pot that stands on a city window sill; to tend
the plant that grows from the seed, saying with surety, “Some day there
will be beans on this plant,” means more to a child than to be told the
life story of an orchid. It is the difference between _thinking_ and
_feeling._
A rake, a shovel, a little basket, a cart, a watering pot—these are all
Montessori didactic materials that any child in any home may have. A
flower pot in a window, a window box, a tiny plot of earth in which to
plant, one of these is possible for each of our children, and the flowers
and fruits that result from the nurture of child hands mean, for the
child, flowers and fruits of the spirit.
The world of every day is full of gardens for our children to plant, and
helpless, dumb animals to be fed and cared for by child hands. It has
been so easy for us to do these things ourselves that we have not stopped
to think what it means in the life of a child to have _helped something
to live_.
There is the bare seed, without shape or body or hint of promise. There
is the green, groping plant that appears. Then comes the sure blooming
that rewards child patience. Some plants are more slow to sprout than
others; there is the fruit tree that did not sprout in the child’s life
but whose pink blooms he now sees. So it may be that the good hope
planted in his own heart while he is still a little fellow may not
fructify for a long time, but he will wait, with patience and faith.
Caring for plants and dumb animals has further life application for
children. We continually serve our little ones. Because we love them, we
do too much for children; we take from their eager hands all works of
service for others which would do much to develop the latent sympathy
that buds in every child’s heart, only waiting for the slightest stimulus
which will make it expand and develop.
[Illustration: To feel that something is dependent upon him for care and
food helps a child to reverence life.]
Your child needs one plant that is dependent for life upon his care.
He needs one pet that demands his daily forethought and vigilance to
safeguard its life. As he waters the plant, watching it and providing
for it the best conditions of light and freedom; as he feeds his pet,
your child feels and is able to image the watchfulness of his father and
mother who feed and care for him, who gave _him_ life. He will form a
habit of _feeling_ and _helping_, and will grow up loving, sympathetic,
and with a reverence for the phenomena of life.
There are also the rewards that nature gives children, coming as
marvelous surprises, unexplainable mysteries, beyond the work of hands.
The little ones at the Via Giusti Children’s House in Rome may be often
seen clustered about a blossom that has unfolded while they were at home
and waits to greet them in the morning—so different, so vastly more
beautiful than the tiny seed which they sowed. These children would not
care for a crude toy, given them as a reward for their labors. The toy
can be explained; it is made of wood, or iron; it has no connection with
the child’s work for which it is given as a prize.
But here is a lily, the reward of their work, but unexplainable; the
product of a force that is miracle working. Its petals are like wax.
With their sensitized little fingers the children touch them; no, they
are not wax. No one can tell of what texture these petals are made. The
flower has its own perfume, haunting, individual. Andrea did not plant
those petals, he did not smell that perfume when he buried his hope. It
found its own body.
So with the greatest simplicity, Dr. Montessori brings to children the
truths learned from the cultivation of _life_.
THE MIRACLE OF OLGA
_Reading and Writing as Natural for Your Child as Speech_
“I have something strange in my pocket,” Olga exclaimed to the group of
little ones who clustered about her, twittering, poised in excitement
like a flock of baby birds.
It was just after the luncheon hour in the Children’s House, and the
babies filled the sunshiny paths of the garden or loitered in happy
groups in the cool stone cloister of the Convent.
“My mother told me the story of Pinocchio, the wooden marionette, who had
so many adventures with a cricket for his friend, and also a fairy with
blue hair. It is too wonderful a story to have been born in the mind of
my mother. She _found_ it. I have it now, with me!”
There was a breathless hush among the little ones. Pairs of blue and
hazel eyes fixed every motion of the little brown maid in the bright
pink apron. With slow dignity and an effect of great mystery Olga thrust
one chubby hand into the depths of her pocket. The fingers fumbled a bit,
then pulled out a crumpled, printed page torn from a book. Dropping,
cross-legged, to the stone floor of the cloister, Olga unfolded and
spread out the page in her lap. The others bent over her with all the
curiosity and reverence that would be stimulated by a conjurer.
“Here is the mystery,” Olga announced, indicating the printed words. “I
have discovered that _this_ is the hiding place of Pinocchio. I have torn
it out of the book that I may carry it, always, in my pocket.”
“Olga will carry Pinocchio in her pocket,” the others exclaimed in hushed
whispers, scattering to talk over the matter. “Is it possible that we,
too, could find Pinocchio, as Olga has, and carry him in _our_ pockets?”
So it happened that the mothers of the children of the Via Giusti School
began to miss pages from their newspapers, their magazines, their books.
“We have very bad, destructive children,” they decided, not stopping to
question the reason for their little ones’ sudden interest in written
language.
So it happened, also, that the directress of the school, always alert to
watch the mind phenomena of her children, noticed that many children in
the school had torn bits of printed pages hidden in their apron pockets,
in the soles of their shoes, in their caps. In the midst of their most
fascinating work, they would stop, take out these scraps of print, smooth
them, and trace the letters with baby fingers.
“We have stories with us all the time; Pinocchio is ours,” they said.
“My little discoverers!” the far-seeing directress exclaimed. “They are
not wilfully destructive. They are ready, now, to create a new language
that will carry them farther than spoken words can. Their longings shall
be satisfied.”
One morning the directress gave Olga new materials with which to work.
There was a big, white wood box divided into twenty-six compartments, and
in each compartment there was a huge letter of the alphabet cut from pink
or blue cardboard. The blue letters were consonants; the pink letters
were vowels. Seated on a soft green rug on the floor, Olga spent hours
taking the letters out of their places, piling them in a colored heap of
many fascinating curves and angles, then sorting them and putting each
back in a compartment in the box.
Sometimes, as Olga worked, the slim girl directress dropped down on the
rug beside her. Picking up one of the cardboard letters, she would say:
“This is A, Olga.”
“This is A,” Olga would repeat.
“Can you show me another A?” the directress would then ask. And Olga
would, readily, pick out a similar letter.
“Where is A, Olga?” was the last question in this teaching as Olga
selected from the twenty-six letters another A. So the little maid of
four years soon knew all the letters by name and sound. And presently she
was combining them to make words and short sentences.
[Illustration: Building words with the movable alphabet.]
As she laid together the letters that made up each word, the words that
combined to make sentences, the directress analyzed each word for her,
phonetically. Soon, by hearing a word, distinctly pronounced, Olga could
select from her box of pink and blue symbols which represented sounds to
her now those letters which were necessary to spell the word.
The directress presented to her smooth white cards, on which were mounted
large black letters cut from coarse black emery cloth, as rough as
sandpaper. These letter cards Olga held in one hand, tracing the outline
of the letters with the fingers of her other hand and saturating her
senses with the _feeling_ of the letter shapes. Soon, she could name any
letter, her eyes closed, by the sense of touch.
At the same time that Olga was learning to _see_ and _feel_ letters,
she was being helped to the muscular control involved in writing. Upon
a sheet of white paper she laid one of the Montessori geometric insets,
a square, and selecting a brightly colored pencil, she drew the outline
of the square upon the paper. Then, with the slanting lines used in
writing, Olga filled in the outline of the square. At first, the lines
were crooked, extending beyond the boundary lines of the square; but as
she repeated the exercise, filling in with color other forms, outlined
triangles, rectangles, circles, leaves, flowers, trees, and figures of
children and animals, her muscles strengthened and she could control her
pencil with the utmost precision.
Two months after her first interest in a printed page had shown itself,
through no training save these sensory and muscle exercises, Olga made
the miracle of graphic art her own. She went to the blackboard and wrote
in clear, flowing script: “I read, I write.”
_Your_ baby tears picture books and magazines; he leaves great,
unbeautiful scrawls upon wall paper, woodwork, and sidewalk. He upsets
the ink and breaks the pens in his father’s study. He wishes to handle
all the books upon the library shelves. We punish him for these acts
because we think them wanton. Dr. Montessori tells us that these child
activities indicate an instinctive interest in the _symbols_ of that new
art, human speech, which he is making his own in the first years of his
life. They tell us that we have made a mistake in not giving children
an opportunity to teach themselves to read and write at the same time
that they are mastering spoken language. The two interests present
themselves simultaneously in our little ones. Children who tear books
and scribble upon walls and interfere with the immaculate order of our
home secretaries are not little mischief makers. Like Olga, and the other
babies in the Children’s House, they are trying to _make their own_ the
story that you read them. Even the tools of writing for little children
are gilded with the same air of mystery that touches the untranslatable
black print.
The wonder teaching of Montessori, by means of which, after two or three
months of preliminary exercises, little ones “explode” into reading and
writing, may begin at home. Any watchful mother may lay the foundations
for this educational marvel.
Have you watched the process by means of which the little Stranger who
came to you from the unknown masters the strange speech of the home in
which he found himself?
Are you helping or hindering him in his struggles to make language his
own?
The beginnings of speech in the baby consist in repetition of syllabic
sounds which he hears in his home environment. His vocal cords and tongue
educate themselves through pronouncing articulate sounds. First come the
labials. Then the little one combines consonants and sounds, saying:
“Ma-Ma. Pa-Pa.” The mechanism by means of which the sense of hearing
combines with the vocal cords in helping the two-year-old to speak makes
it possible for a child to learn several foreign languages in the first
five years of his life.
The child is making his own dictionary in babyhood and at a phenomenal
rate of speed.
Dr. Montessori says that we may help a child to beautifully phonetic
speech and a large vocabulary if we will eliminate all baby talk from our
nurseries, and see that the little one hears only good models of speech.
Clear-cut, carefully pronounced words, well-planned and euphonious
sentences, rhythmic poems and classic stories read to our children,
these will train the sense of hearing and lead to a large vocabulary and
beautiful pronunciation. Suppose you were learning a foreign language,
wouldn’t it discourage you to have your interpreter mispronounce, _baby
talk_ French or German or Italian to you? Our babies find themselves in a
land more strange to them than any foreign country we have ever visited.
We are their interpreters; let us not put stumbling blocks in their road
to language.
[Illustration: Learning the form of letters by the sense of touch.]
[Illustration: Filling in outlines with color to gain the muscular
control necessary for writing.]
Then, sometimes at three years, four, or five comes the tearing and
scribbling stage. Every mother knows it, but Dr. Montessori helps us to
a new recognition of its meaning. It isn’t a development of the old Adam
in your child. It’s a guide signal for every mother. It tells you that
the intricate human mechanism that makes up the child spirit is ready to
learn written language naturally, without undue nerve strain, if only the
right stimulus be offered.
It is because we have waited until the instinctive interest in spoken
language grows dull and because we have depended upon only one sense, the
sense of vision, that teaching a child to read and write has not been the
natural, quick process nature means it to be.
If the nursery equipment includes the movable alphabet and the sandpaper
letters of the Montessori didactic materials, your little one, instead of
tearing letters, may _feel_ them, his sense of touch carrying to his mind
a telegraphic message of letter form that is registered permanently on
his brain. After handling these large, stiff, pink and blue letters for
a month or two, after tracing with his sensitized finger tips the rough
black letters mounted on the smooth white cards, they are so indelible a
part of his mental life that they _must_ burst forth into writing without
previous training. Don’t you remember how your baby by fingering his
raised letters on his alphabet-bordered bread-and-milk bowl, by feeling
of the raised letters on his alphabet blocks, by building words with the
cut-out wooden letters of his letter game, learned without effort on
your part how to print? So, by touching the beautiful script letters of
Montessori, a child teaches himself to write.
But there is another process involved in the Montessori method of helping
very little children to an early mastery of reading and writing. In the
public schools a pencil is put into the child’s untrained fingers and we
expect him to use it in writing with no preliminary help in handling it.
We couldn’t use a needle in fine embroidery if we had not learned, first,
how to thread it. We are not able to paint a picture of a landscape
until we learn how to use a brush in outlining perspective. So we make a
mistake when we expect that to hold a pencil means to be able to write.
We must help children to the muscular control of this tool of writing
first. Dr. Montessori tells us that drawing precedes writing.
The Montessori didactic materials for developing in children the muscular
control necessary for writing include small wooden tables; flat metal
forms cut in various shapes, squares, rectangles, circles, and triangles;
plenty of white drawing paper, and good colored pencils of the standard
colors and brown and black. Laying a form on a piece of paper, the
children draw its outline. Removing the form, they _fill in_ the outline,
using long, vertical, parallel lines of any color they like, keeping
within the contour of the outline. So the child educates his muscles for
writing without _actually writing_.
The little ones at Rome soon experiment with combining these forms to
make colored borders and flat designs, which they fill in with their
colored pencils in very harmonious color combinations. Later, they fill
in outlined pictures, using the same free, regular pencil strokes.
The Montessori method of starting reading and writing saves time in most
instances. Whether or not, however, it is at four years or five years or
five and one-half that the “explosion” into written expression of thought
occurs, the process by means of which it is brought about is sure to give
the child a firm perceptive basis for reading and writing.
Our ordinary method of teaching reading and writing is a utilization of
the sense of sight, alone. In some instances the children in the primary
grades of our schools begin writing by a system of tracing letters and
words offered them in large script. This is purely a muscular process
and rarely absolutely successful, because it involves fine muscular
co-ordination for which the child of five or even six years is not ready.
The Montessori sandpaper letters and movable alphabet offer the child a
chance to utilize his sense of touch in learning the symbols of thought.
Formerly we showed him a word or a letter as a means for gaining so
vivid a mental image of that letter that he would be able to recognize
it and write it. The method of Montessori sends a telegraphic message
by two wires to the child mind, a visual and a tactile impression. The
tactile message is peculiarly valuable in strengthening the mental image
of the word or letter because of the fact that the child is in a strong
sensory motor stage of his mental development. To _touch_ gives him
stronger mental images than to _see_. To _feel_ gives him, also, an
impulse to imitate and to express. This is why, after touching and naming
and differentiating and recognizing blindfold and building words and
sentences with letters, the Montessori child spontaneously writes.
Because we are so anxious for immediate educational results with our
little ones, the spontaneous reading and writing of the Montessori method
has seemed to parents one of its most important developments. If, in our
home Montessori experiments, children do not read and write very early,
we are disappointed. We wonder if the system has the value we attached to
it. We must change this state of mind.
There is the toddler of three who evinces an instinctive longing to read
and write. He experiments with pencil and paper; he shows an interest in
the home books, newspapers, and periodicals; he asks what the signs in
the street cars and on the billboards say. There is also the child, no
less promising, but more interested in objects than in symbols, who does
not show these manifestations until the age of five and five and a half
years.
We must recognize these signs according to the child’s age and take
advantage of them. The part of the mother is to watch for the dawning of
the interest in reading and writing and to give the child an opportunity
to perfect the physical and mental mechanism for it.
Our homes and the educational helps to be bought for children now furnish
accessory material for the Montessori process of teaching the graphic art.
The first tracing of the sandpaper letters should be preceded by
exercises whose object will be the refining of the tactile sense; dipping
the fingers into cold, hot, cool, and lukewarm water; differentiating
blindfolded rough, smooth, hard, soft substances; recognizing with the
finger tips alone many different materials, paper, iron, wood, velvet,
cotton, silk, linen, satin, lace, needlework, and possible combinations
of these textiles. These exercises form a most fascinating game for
the child, and, through them, he brings to the exercise of tracing the
sandpaper letters an exquisitely sensitized touch which results in a
clear impression of their form.