Montessori chapter 9

Maria Montessori Her Life and Work by E. Mortimer Standing
Chapter 9 - The Sensorial Foundations of Intellectual Life

Humans aren't purely intellect; their minds don't work independently. The child's mind is interconnected with his physical body. The five senses are the connection between the child's inner self and his surrounding world. In three years, newborn babies collect enough sensory experiences to understand concepts like hard, soft, big, color, etc. These intangible concepts can only be learned through first-hand experience with tangible objects. In some mysterious way, the mind is able to obtain that knowledge through the five senses.

Maria Montessori wanted to help the child accelerate this process and make it more efficient by isolating each attribute to help bring systematic order from the chaotic impressions in the world. She divided the concepts to be learned and designed objects to focus on each concept. If the lesson was going to be hard/soft, she used rods all the same size and color so that the only difference in them was their hardness/softness. That way, the mind could put all its focus on one concept. To teach color, she used tablets that were identical except for color. All future knowledge is built on the foundation of those experiences, so it's important that those first sensory experiences do a solid job of teaching those concepts. A Montessori child won't have vague impressions picked up from routine life jumbled in the dark recesses of his mind. He'll have neatly sorted mental images and categorized memories. [I think Charlotte Mason would have said that this under-values the child's mind and underestimates the ability of human intellect. I think God designed the mind to be able to learn the sensory concepts it needs from the natural environment. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to find God's model more efficient by presenting more than one concept at a time.]

Abstract concepts like math also rely on the use of hands-on manipulatives so that the child experiences the concept first-hand. For example, first steps in geometry are taught by fitting geometric cut-outs into same-shaped holes. After handling the tangible shapes, the child transfers that knowledge to his abstract mind and no longer needs or wants to use the tangible objects. [Hands-on math manipulative curriculums such as Math-U-See use this idea of letting the child handle tangible objects until the child discovers the abstract math concept on his own.]

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