"The secret of good teaching is to regard the children’s intelligence as a fertile field in which seeds are sown, to grow under the heat of flaming imagination. Our aim therefore is not merely to make the children understand, and still less to force them to memorise, but so to touch their imagination as to enthuse them to their inmost core.

We do not want complacent pupils but eager ones; we seek to sow life in children rather than theories, to help them in their growth - mental, emotional as well as physical". Dr Maria Montessori

Dr Maria Montessori was one of the most influential pioneers in early childhood education in the 20th century. Her ideas have become known and recognised throughout the world over a period of more than ninety years.
Dr Montessori was born in Italy in 1870. Her original interest was in medicine; she was the first woman to graduate from the University of Rome Medical School. She became interested in education thorough her work as a doctor. Her work and observation of some of the poorest and most disadvantaged children of working parents in Rome led her to develop ideas and materials tailored to the developmental needs of the growing child.

At the centre of Montessori’s method was her belief in the ‘human potential’ and in the child as his own teacher. Montessori maintained that a child ‘self constructs’ given the right environment and the right activities.

She believed that a child possesses sensitive periods – spans in a child’s life when she/he is particularly sensitive to certain aspects of the environment. These periods are not linear but overlap and some are continuous and they enable the child to acquire characteristics that are particular to humans.
So great was the success of her method that she travelled the world establishing schools and lecturing about her discoveries. She wrote numerous books and many articles right up until her death in 1952 at the age of 82.

She left the legacy of a method of education which combines a practical approach based on a carefully planned learning environment with a philosophy centred on the idea of freedom for the child. Dr Montessori believed that all children are intrinsically motivated to learn and they absorb knowledge without effort when provided with the right kind of activities at the right time in their development.