Dr. Montessori has neither led the child away from his instinctively chosen occupations, nor left him in the state of anarchic chaos resulting from his natural inability to choose, among the bewildering variety of objects in the world, those which are best suited for his self-development. She has, so to speak, taken out into the kitchen, beside the child, busy with his self-chosen amusements, her highly trained brain, stored with pertinent scientific information, and she has looked at him long and hard. As a result she is able to show us, what our own blurred observation never would have distinguished, just which elements, in the heterogeneous mass of his naturally preferred toys, are the elements towards which the tendrils of his rapidly-growing intellectual and muscular organism are reaching.
DESCRIPTION OF THE REST OF THE APPARATUS AND THE METHOD FOR WRITING AND READING
The carefully graded advance, from the simpler to the harder exercises, which is so essential a part of the correct use of the Montessori, as of all other educational apparatus, seems to most mothers contemplating the use of the system, a very difficult feature. “How am I to know?” they ask. “Which exercise is the best one to offer a child to begin with, how can I tell when he has sufficiently mastered that so that another is needed, and how shall I select the right one to go on with?”
Perhaps the first answer to make to these questions is the one which so often successfully solves Montessori problems: “Have a little more trust in your child’s natural instincts. Don’t think that a single mistake on your part will be fatal. It will not hurt him if you happen to suggest the wrong thing, if you do not insist on it, for, left freely to himself, he will not pay the least attention to anything that is not suitable for him. Give him opportunity for perfectly free action, and then _watch him carefully_.”
If he shows a lively spontaneous interest in a Montessori problem, and devotes himself to solving it, you may be sure that you have hit upon something which suits his degree of development. If he goes through with it rather easily and, perhaps, listlessly, and needs your reminder to keep his attention on it, in all probability it is too easy; he has outgrown it, he no longer cares to occupy himself with it, just as you no longer care to jump rope, though that may have been a passion with you at the age of eight.