Wait While Observing

by Leila Edwards

" What the new year brings to you will depend a great deal on what you bring to the new year."

~ Vern McLellan

"Even when helping and serving the children, she (the teacher) must not cease to observe them, because the birth of concentration in a child is as delicate a phenomenon as the bursting of a bud into bloom."

—Maria Montessori, The Absorbent Mind

Maria Montessori was a scientist and medical doctor trained to observe phenomena carefully. She applied those observation skills to children, like an anthropologist or botanist, who keeps the smallest details. In her assignments as a doctor, Montessori watched developmentally challenged children in a bare room playing with the crumbs on the floor because they had nothing else to manipulate or stimulate their senses. She was inspired to begin making educational materials and, through a process of trial and error, refined the materials based on her scientific observations of children using them.

On our way to the library, a student notices the Psycho-Sensory Motor Development Timeline.

"Wait while observing. That is the motto of the educator."

             ~ Maria Montessori.