When this occurs, affected children will generally have a harder time gaining those abilities even if they later get special attention and resources designed to help them compensate. It's like children have a window of opportunity when they are ready to grow in certain ways if they have the right stuff and tools in their environment. When that window closes, it will never be as easy to grow in those ways again.
Theorists disagree about how important it is for children to have that special stimuli at each growing stage in order to reach their milestones. Some theorists call these times critical periods, but other theorists call them sensitive periods. The difference between critical periods and sensitive periods is subtle. Theorists who believe in critical periods believe that children who do not get special stimulation during their window of receptivity are going to be "stuck" forever and never gain the abilities they should have gained in that period.
However, other theorists believe that those very sensitive times in a child's life are just sensitive periods. They agree that children who do not get the right nurturing at the right times to jumpstart their developmental potential are going to have problems later in life, but they do not think that this inability to develop is permanent.
For example, infancy is the time when children first learn they can trust an adult or parent to take care of all their needs, keep them safe, and give them love. Some infants live in orphanages where there are far too many babies for the few nurses and staff members to take care of them. These children go through their first years with hardly any touch or affection that would teach them to trust and to show affection to caregivers. If these children are eventually adopted by a loving family later on in their childhood, they often have trouble adjusting to having an affectionate, loving parent.
Beauty, another principle of the prepared environment, requires designing complete learning activities. Everything needed is present and in good repair. Objects placed in the classroom are attractive, elegant, and designed to attract the child's interest and attention.
The classroom objects also represent reality and nature. Children use real sinks and refrigerators instead of pretend ones. Because in real life everyone does not have the same thing at the same time, there is only one piece of material instead of multiple sets. Contact with nature and reality are a third principle.
Montessori taught that a child's direct contact with nature results in understanding and appreciating order, harmony, and beauty. The Montessori classroom environment is a place of life. Children learn to take care of plants, animals, and fish. Magnifying glasses, microscopes, and simple experiments are available for children to observe and learn from nature.
If the environment does not contain what the child seeks, Montessori believed that the child would not obtain his or her full potential. The child's personality would become permanently stunted. Recent research on optimal learning conditions verifies Dr. When the classroom and teacher are child-centered, children will learn more, and they will learn with greater comprehension.
When children are allowed to make choices, move about the classroom, and explore objects that demonstrate relationships, their academic achievements tend towards deeper understanding. Children in our Montessori classrooms enjoy optimal learning conditions which also offer opportunities to achieve self-discipline, confidence, and develop proficiencies in communication and problem solving.
How you learn does influence who you will become. By Paul Epstein, Ph. The Sensitive Periods Nearly one hundred years ago, Dr. A passionate love for established routines, children can be deeply disturbed by disorder.
The environment must be carefully organized with a place for everything and with carefully established ground-rules. They attempt to reproduce these with pencil or pen and paper. Montessori discovered that writing precedes reading. Website by Community Structure. Allow your child to crawl, pull up and encourage walking with or without assistance. As they get older, your child is improving their coordination of fine movements such as being able to hold small items with a pincer grip and release voluntarily.
Gross motor coordination can be supported by walking, running, balancing and jumping. This is when children learn to develop friendships and participate in group play. Children begin to model their behaviour on adult social behaviour and gradually acquire the social norms of their group. Manners and courtesy are modelled by the adults. The urge to pay attention to detail is part of their effort to build up an understanding of the world. These experiences provide children with a system to classify objects within their environment.
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