Montessori Core Values and "How does 'heuristic play' fit into the 3-15 months classroom?"


Question: 

"I love the “heuristic play” and to watch it unfold. How does it fit into the Nido (3 months to 15 months) classroom, especially in an AMI classroom that is only to have items from the guides’ albums and trainings?"



The issue you bring up with this question is the idea of experimenting in your Montessori environment.



AMI trains a person to put a precise model into practice. It is an intensive course, as those who have taken it know, requiring a serious commitment of both time and moral dedication to the AMI vision, and to the idea of protecting the integrity of the model which goes back to the early 1980's when Dr. Montanaro held the first training in her home. 

What we actually do in our Montessori environments, how we apply our Montessori 0-3 training might look different from one person to the next. But in AMI schools, the physical environments are replicas of the training environment. If your school has an AMI recognition, you are required to be in compliance with the AMI pedagogical standards. So in this case, your AMI Nido classroom should “only have items from the guides' albums” as you pointed out.


If your 0-3 environment is not AMI recognized and is not working towards recognition with an 'affiliated' or 'associated' status, you may want to experiment with heuristic style activities (self-discovery) and offer some different materials. This experimentation is a bit like what the children will do: try something out, see what happens, self-correct, try again, observe cause and effect, and so on. 

You can use the following guidelines to measure your experimentation against the core values of the Montessori pedagogy


The core values are something we discussed at length while preparing for the Prague presentation.

  • “follow the child”: know who the child is through observations of his individual preferences
  • an environment must be designed for the developmental stage of the child, rich in exploratory opportunity and allowing for maximum independence in its use
  • respect the child's sensitive period for order: constancy in a secure relationship with one adult; consistency of rhythms of the program; and consistency of the order in the environment.  Always provide the child with the information about what will be happening before it occurs.
  • respect the sensitive period for movement and freedom of choice – choice in the way objects are used, choice in how to physically be when active
  • respect spontaneous exploration, which leads to repetition, inventiveness and concentration
  • “help me do it myself” - as the child grows in self-confidence and acquires more and more independence, always respect the “threshold of intervention” which is even more delicate in the under three environment
  • respect the sensitive period for language and that the child absorbs language through listening, from having rich dialogue, from rhymes and songs.
  • OBSERVATION: means acquiring the attitude of a scientist who sees the facts, who refrains from judgments and prejudices, who provides limits but always in a gentle way
  • respect the child as it allows the child to embody respect: children who are mistreated, ignored or abused are often aggressive, depressed, dependent, or disinterested in engaging in the environment
  • respect the individual rhythms of each child
  • respect the child's interest to do what the adult does and provide child sized and appropriate objects so that they can participate in the tasks of daily life and learn to independently do new forms of activities
  • create an educational climate that is non-competitive, provides security and individual satisfaction, that contributes to the possibility of a 'cohesive society' ... one that arises spontaneously and is lasting
  • have diverse groups with different aged children 
  • listen to and observe the children's families offering support for parents



Simple collections of appropriate 'heuristic objects' can be placed on the shelves in an environment for the littlest ones and brought to the center of the room during the morning work time. These objects are every day things, usually recycled, that can be collected without spending a lot of money. They can be containers of any kind. And they can be things that can be put into containers, allowing for the hand-eye coordination and in the case of the youngest babies: hand-eye-mouth coordination. 

  1. hair rollers that insert into each other
  2. large cardboard tubes that can have things dropped into them
  3. large tin cans and smaller dimension tin cans that fit into others
  4. pieces of rope, ribbon or tubing
  5. large and small corks
  6. cups or cones that fit together
  7. tubes of varying sizes
  8. groups of keys
  9. short pieces of metal chain
  10. metal lids
  11. wooden push-on type clothes pins
  12. large cardboard boxes for climbing onto and pushing around (filled with styrofoam and covered with packaging tape for slickness)

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