The Montessori Elementary Material The Advanced Montessori Method — Inside the Classic

e real lesson on the noun, and when, after great difficulty, the word "_sweet_" came out, the children would run and bring me every possible object that was sweet. I would refuse each one in turn. "No, I didn't ask for candy! No, I didn't ask for sugar!" The children would look at the object they had in their hands, half laughing, half puzzled and beginning to realize that _sweet_ was not a _name_, that it was not a _noun_. These first lessons, which seemed something like commands that needed the help of the children to express themselves, brought the children to understand some part of speech, while evoking, at the same time, vivid and interesting scenes. They furnished the original impulse to the development we have reached to-day in our lessons on grammar. For such lessons we have adopted the term "commands." But with normal children these "commands" were gradually multiplied and evolved. They are no longer entrusted to the teacher's ingenuity; nor are they dependent solely upon her dramatic sense--something essential if she is to stimulate the weak nervous reactions of little defectives and so gain and hold their attention. The "commands" to-day are written and may be read. They are combined with the card-exercises where the cards are read in silence and interpreted through actions--a method which grew spontaneously and with such great success from the work in the "Children's House." That is why, to-day, we speak in the elementary courses of "reading commands" or even of "writing commands."

The study of grammar has finally been arranged in a methodical series of exercises and the material has been prepared after careful and rigid experiment. Those who read this method will get a clear idea of the teacher's task. She has a material ready for use. She need not bother to compose a single sentence nor to consult a single program. The objects at her disposal contain all that is necessary. She need know simply what they are and how they are to be used. The lessons which she must give are so simple, and require so few words, that they become lessons rather of gesture and action than of words. It must be borne in mind, further, that the work is not as uninteresting as would appear from this arid summary. The actual school is a real intellectual laboratory, where the children work all the time and by themselves. After the material has been presented to them, they _recognize_ it and like to hunt for it. They know how to find for themselves the precious objects which they want to use. They often exchange materials and even lessons with other children. The few lessons the teacher gives connect, as it were, a system of live wires, which set in motion activities quite disproportionate to the energy expended in the simple act she performs. She pushes, so to speak, a button and here a bell rings, there a light goes on, there a machine begins to buzz. Very often the teacher sees a whole week go by without any need of intervention on her part.

And yet what delicacy and tact are necessary properly to "offer" this material, to give in an interesting way a lesson calculated to exert a direct action upon the child's spiritual activity! How skilful we must be to leave all the child's spontaneous impulses free to develop themselves, to keep careful watch over so many different individual impulses! This we must do if we are to "keep the lamp burning"! When, for example, on passing a table where the child has analyzed a sentence with the colored cards, the teacher shifts about, as if in play, one of the little slips, not only must she be possessed of the psychological insight necessary for intervening in this child's work at the proper time, but she must also have in mind the grammatical rule of which she wishes to give the child his first intuition. It follows that every single act of the teacher, however insignificant apparently, is, like the acts of the priest in the service, of the greatest importance, and should come from a consciousness thoroughly awake, and full of potentiality. Instead of giving out what she has in herself, the teacher must bring out the full possibilities of the children.

The teacher's extrinsic preparation is a matter of thorough acquaintance with the material. It should be so much a part of her that she knows at once what is needed for each individual case as soon as it arises. Actual practise soon develops this skill.