Dr. Montessori tells us the place of nature in education. We will put the planting and tending of little gardens, which are the child’s own, above the place which such work has held, formerly, as a part of manual education. We will make gardening a means of leading our little ones to observe the phenomena of life, to be patient in waiting for that life to manifest itself, and to be very sure in the hope that fruition will come.
Does your little Andrea, your child who has come to you with such a divine curiosity about life and so quick a sense to feel it, have a chance to be, himself, a part of the miracle by helping something to grow? To plant a seed, to surround it with all the best conditions for growth, to tend it, to wait for its flowerings—this is Montessori development possible for any child.
The loving care of a dumb animal results in child sympathy.
Many of us feel that we are bringing our little ones into a nearness with nature when we show them beautiful pictures of flowers, lead them to exquisite gardens in which they must not pick the flowers, or take them to walk in our parks. This is not making nature a force in the life of a child as Dr. Montessori would have us. Children must touch and feel and act to know. The flower that is too beautiful for little fingers to gracefully pick and give to a friend as an offering of love should have no place in our gardens. The grass that is too soft to bear the prints of little feet is not the right kind of grass for an American park.
To plant a bean in a clay pot that stands on a city window sill; to tend the plant that grows from the seed, saying with surety, “Some day there will be beans on this plant,” means more to a child than to be told the life story of an orchid. It is the difference between thinking and feeling.
A rake, a shovel, a little basket, a cart, a watering pot—these are all Montessori didactic materials that any child in any home may have. A flower pot in a window, a window box, a tiny plot of earth in which to plant, one of these is possible for each of our children, and the flowers and fruits that result from the nurture of child hands mean, for the child, flowers and fruits of the spirit.
The world of every day is full of gardens for our children to plant, and helpless, dumb animals to be fed and cared for by child hands. It has been so easy for us to do these things ourselves that we have not stopped to think what it means in the life of a child to have helped something to live.
There is the bare seed, without shape or body or hint of promise. There is the green, groping plant that appears. Then comes the sure blooming that rewards child patience. Some plants are more slow to sprout than others; there is the fruit tree that did not sprout in the child’s life but whose pink blooms he now sees. So it may be that the good hope planted in his own heart while he is still a little fellow may not fructify for a long time, but he will wait, with patience and faith.
Caring for plants and dumb animals has further life application for children. We continually serve our little ones. Because we love them, we do too much for children; we take from their eager hands all works of service for others which would do much to develop the latent sympathy that buds in every child’s heart, only waiting for the slightest stimulus which will make it expand and develop.