Carolyn Sherwin Bailey

The child from one to three and four years of age is in need of definite physical exercises that will tend to the normal development of physiological movements. We ordinarily give the little child’s body slight thought. Then, in the schools, we gather older children into large classes, and by a series of collective gymnastics in which the commands of the teacher check all spontaneity, we try to secure poise and self-control and grace for the child body.

simple physical exercises, so simple as to seem to us almost obvious, but the results in child poise, control, and grace have drawn the attention of the entire world.

singing circle games of Froebel

“Not commands, but freedom; not teaching, but observation,”

number of factors contribute to the goodness of the Montessori child, but one of the most important of these is that he “knows himself.”

. Montessori gives us a new, a better way of educating little children. Before we present her didactic materials to a child, before—even—he leaves his cradle and his mother’s arms, we will give the child his birthright of freedom; physical freedom, mental freedom, moral freedom.

Every child is born with an unlimited capacity for good.

So we will be patient with our babies and watch them and wait expectantly for the unfolding of their minds and souls which will surely come if we supply the opportunity.

we suffocate children’s activities, we suffocate their lives

The only way to keep a child still is to teach him orderly movement.