“Bring me your ball.”
“Close the door.”
Innumerable helps are to be procured for the drawing by means of which Montessori establishes the muscular control preliminary to writing. Our art stores and kindergarten supply shops offer beautifully colored crayons and drawing paper at nominal cost. Blocks, the tin utensils of the kitchen, and box covers offer geometric surfaces about which the child may draw, if the drawing board and forms of Montessori are not included in the home equipment. These outlines the child will delight in filling with color, using the diagonal strokes that form a direct preparation for the muscular control involved in writing. Following this coloring of geometric forms is the filling in, similarly, of simple outlined pictures. We find such outlined pictures in large variety in the school and kindergarten supply shops. The toy dealers supply books of really beautiful designs and pictures for coloring. It is also possible to procure sets of cardboard figures, animals, paper dolls, and soldiers which the home child may draw around and color.
One day, after having made his own, through the sense of touch, the form of letters, and after having learned muscular control in drawing form, your child will write. How can he help it? You will have established artificial conditions, muscle and sense, similar to the conditions through which he learns to talk.
The baby hears speech, and because heredity perfected his vocal cords for reacting upon mental stimulus of the sound—he talks. In the Montessori method, he feels letters, and through the perfecting of the muscles involved in reproducing those letters which he has made his own by feeling—he writes.
CLARA—LITTLE MOTHER
The Social Development of the Montessori Child
Clara always saw me before I caught the outline of her cherubic chubby person. She had constituted herself the little four-year-old hostess of the Trionfale Children’s House. Her limpid brown eyes shone with welcome to a friend or stranger. Her lips were overflowing with sweetly liquid words of greeting. Her fat arms reached out, her fat legs were winged with her friendliness.
She was the motherly, hen type of child, never so full of joy as when she was greeting someone or organizing a game or taking care of a child younger than herself. An intensely feminine little person was Clara, who would grow up into a kindly, gracious woman, forceful in her own tactful, woman way if she were surrounded by the right influences in childhood or——