The Origins of the Montessori Approach
Dr. Maria Montessori born in 1870 was an Italian medical doctor who spent a great deal of time observing children and documenting what she observed. She followed their natural tendencies and interests and adapted the environment to meet their individual needs. She found that children strived for independence where in the right environment with nurturing and caring educators they are capable and eager to learn.
The Montessori approach is a philosophy of life, a way of living in harmony and wisdom with others that inspires awe and wonder and deeper interconnections with the whole universe (Simone Davies, 2024). This should include joyful, open-ended hands-on learning environments that foster shared creativity and critical thinking.
A Gentle and Respectful Partnership
The Montessori approach is not about picture-perfect settings and expensive wooden toys and resources and Montessori childminding is more than creating beautiful spaces for children. The Montessori approach is about a gentle and respectful partnership with both children, parents and other family members that includes respect, tolerance and kindness.
Children are treated as individuals, each with their own unique interests and needs. The Montessori approach is very much about ‘following the child’ and meeting children where they are at, this includes high expectations for all children and enabling them to fulfil their full potential. Parents often choose my setting because of the Montessori ethos as it often fits in well with gentle and respectful parenting.
It is important to mention that the Montessori approach is neither ‘authoritarian’ or ‘permissive’ but about supporting independence and freedom within limits, where boundaries are set with compassion and respect to guide and support children.
Montessori in a Home-Based Early Years Setting
The Montessori approach works beautifully in a home-based early years setting and does not require childminders to adapt their homes with separate playrooms or home corners and expensive toys or materials. Childminders are wonderfully placed to provide a nurturing home-based learning environment as parents often choose a childminder for the simplicity of the home-based setting (a home away from home).
Practical Life: The Foundation of Learning
‘Practical Life’ is the first area of the Montessori curriculum where practical life activities that follow the normal routines of the home environment provide a link with the child’s home and provides comfort to children as they observe and participate in these familiar activities and routines.
The ‘practical life’ activities might include helping to clean and set the table for snack and mealtimes; preparing snacks and meals and pouring drinks; sweeping, dusting and wiping furniture and objects; polishing wood, glass, mirrors and metal objects; washing dishes; pegging activities; folding hand and face cloths; baking and cooking; threading and sewing and gardening activities.
Practical life activities also support development of self, this includes grace and courtesy activities, personal hygiene such as wiping noses, washing hands, brushing teeth and hair; independence in dressing and learning to use the potty or toilet.
Supporting Physical Development Through Everyday Activities
Practical life activities also support the development of fine and gross motor skills, for example fine motor manipulative skills develop through pouring activities; transferring activities using tongs, ladles or spoons; opening and closing activities using boxes, bottles, locks and keys; threading, weaving and sewing activities and using tools e.g. stationary, clay or woodwork tools.
Large motor skills develop through a range of activities including sweeping and raking outdoors when gardening and carrying heavy watering cans and buckets to water the plants and vegetables, outdoor play and indoor movement activities.
The Montessori Curriculum and the EYFS
The other areas of the Montessori Curriculum are very similar to the Early Years Foundation Stage, including mathematics, literacy, knowledge and understanding of the world and creativity. Communication and language, personal, social and emotional development and physical development are interwoven within the Montessori curriculum.
Sensorial Learning: Education of the Senses
The Montessori approach is very much an holistic and embodied approach to learning through the different senses and hands-on learning, this is called sensorial learning or education of the senses.
We spend time in my garden where we do lots of creative sensory messy play and mark making with clay, paints, mud and sand and gardening where we grow plants and vegetables. Babies and toddlers enjoy treasure baskets and heuristic play with items found around the home and natural loose part materials.
Montessori Materials and Adaptations
Maria Montessori adapted wooden Montessori learning materials that while aesthetically pleasing have important didactic properties that support children’s hands-on learning. A popular Montessori learning material that I often use in my setting is the colour boxes that have a range of colour tablets ranging from colour box 1 that has pairs of the 3 primary colours to colour box 3 that has seven shades of the nine colours found in colour box 2.
The purpose of the colour boxes is to refine children’s visual perception and chromatic sense where the shades of different colours refine children’s visual perception of colour. I often use these colour tablets when outdoors and learning about nature as the colour palette of nature is so diverse, the children enjoy matching the colours and different shades of colour with natural objects found in the garden or on walks to the park.
Montessori learning materials can be very expensive so I advise other childminders interested in the Montessori approach to adapt what they have already in their setting or can make or recycle/upcycle from something else, for example a cheaper alternative to the colour tablets is the colour sample cards that you can pick up from a DIY store when choosing paint colours.
Peace Education, Sustainability and Connection to the World
The Montessori approach is very much about promoting sustainable practice through ‘Peace Education’, this includes following the ‘United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals’, ecological interconnectedness with nature and respect for different cultures.
This includes learning about the world through experiences in the local area and community so that children develop deeper interconnections with the human and more-than-human world. In my setting we focus on seasonal learning where we follow the rhythms of the seasons, this includes nature walks in the local area, the Montessori Birthday walk to celebrate the children’s birthdays and learning about different seasonal celebrations.
Knowledge and Understanding of the World activities include exploring storytelling, rhymes, music, food and celebrations based on local and global cultures and exploring local rural and urban nature and the changing seasons, therefore offering children a deeper interconnection with the world in which we live
About the Author
My name is Michelle Winters and I have been childminding and working in Montessori settings for over 12 years. I am a Level 4 trained
Early Years Educator with Montessori Pedagogy and have an MA in Childhood Studies and Early Years where my specialist area is peace
education and environmental and ecological learning. Even though I follow the Montessori approach and philosophy I do blend with
different approaches, such as Reggio Emilia, Froebel, Hygge and Slow Pedagogy approaches. I also follow recent evidence-based practice.
My setting is called ‘Little Olive Tree Montessori’. I have a Facebook Page and Website: http://littleolivetreemontessori.co.uk/
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100057363942824
Further Reading and Professional Development
If Childminders want to learn more about the Montessori approach and bringing into their homebased setting then I recommend books by
Simone Davies: The Montessori Baby, The Montessori Toddler and the Montessori Child. She also has a website with lots of information
and introductory courses to the Montessori Approach: https://themontessorinotebook.com/
