This short, illustrated guide to the use of Montessori classroom materials describes how to set up a "children's house"--an environment for learning where children can be their own masters. Frames, geometrical objects, colored numerical rods, and many other items are familiar features of any Montessori classroom, and Montessori explains how to use them with preschool children to stimulate their powers of observation, recognition, judgment, and classification. She stresses that each child approaches the apparatus differently, while the role of the adult is to let the child experiment, perceive his own mistakes, and run his own risks in learning.

The Montessori Method by Maria Montessori immediately captivated social reformers and educators around the world. First published in Italian in 1909, The Montessori Method has been translated into twenty languages, including the 1912 English translation. Its ideas were new and innovative compared to the traditional Lancasterian method in which large groups of children recited the teachers' words, word for word in unison. Instead of the teacher being the center of the classroom and the students being listeners and observers, Maria Montessori believed in children learning at their own pace and in their own fashion. The book begins with a collection of Montessori's speeches and then moves onto her research in education. Early chapters show how she used scientific methodology of the era, anthropomorphic measurement, to substantiate physiological explanations for children's educational potentials. It depicts Montessori as a scientist using scientific inquiry to validate her ideas and methods as the beginning of pedagogical science. -- from http://www.barnesandnoble.com (Oct. 14, 2015).

The originator of the Montessori method describes in detail the materials, techniques and philosophy of her progressive approach to early childhood education.