Then she crossed to Raffaelo, bringing with her a handful of color spools—two red, two blue, two yellow.
“These are yours,” she said. “Will you give your little neighbor’s colors back to him, because it was not right to take them? When you have carried to him every one of the spools, return to me and I will tell you about your colors.”
Happily, Raffaelo did as he was told, receiving his first lesson in ethics before he had his first color lesson. Returning, he stood, wide-eyed and fascinated, beside the directress as she held out to him two of the color spools.
“This is red,” she explained, laying the red spool on the white table in front of him, and waiting a moment or two, that he might make the mental association between the name of the color and the color itself. Then she showed him a blue wound spool.
“This is blue,” she said, laying his spool at the opposite side of the table from the red one, and again waiting for Raffaelo to make the association of name and color. Taking the next step in this Montessori teaching, she pointed to the red wound spool, and asked:
“What is this, Raffaelo?”
“Red,” he laughed back.
“And this?” pointing to the other one.
“Blue!” Raffaelo almost shouted in his delight at acquiring knowledge.