CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
Preface[v]
I. Some Introductory Remarks About Parents[ 1]
II. A Day in a Casa dei Bambini[ 7]
III. More About What Happens in a Casa dei Bambini [ 29]
IV. Something About the Apparatus and About the Theory Underlying It [ 48]
V. Description of the Rest of the Apparatus and the Method for Writing and Reading[ 67]
VI. Some General Remarks About the Montessori Apparatus in the American Home[ 91]
VII. The Possibility of American Adaptations of, or Additions to, the Montessori Apparatus [ 105]
VIII. Some Remarks on the Philosophy of the System [ 117]
IX. Application of This Philosophy to American Home Life[ 127]
X. Some Considerations on the Nature of “Discipline”[ 141]
XI. More About Discipline, with Special Regard to Obedience[ 153]
XII. Difficulties in the Way of a Universal Adoption of the Montessori Ideas[ 165]
XIII. Is There Any Real Difference Between the Montessori System and the Kindergarten? [ 171]
XIV. Moral Training[ 195]
XV. Dr. Montessori’s Life and the Origin of the Casa dei Bambini [ 210]
XVI. Some Last Remarks[ 232]
Index[ 239]


ILLUSTRATIONS

Maria Montessori[ Frontispiece]
The schoolroom in the convent of the Franciscan nuns in the Via Giusti page [8]
The meal hour [22]
The morning clean-up [26]
Waiter carrying soup [26]
Exercises in practical life[56]
Building “the Tower” [56]
Buttoning-frames to develop co-ordinated movements of the fingers and prepare the children for exercises of practical life [68]
Solid geometrical insets [70]
The broad stair [74]
The long stair[74]
Insets which the child learns to place both by sight and touch [ 78]
Tracing sandpaper letters[86]
Tracing geometrical design [ 86]
Training the “stereognostic sense”—combining motor and tactual images [100]
Color boxes comprising spools of eight colors and eight shades of each color [116]
Materials for teaching rough and smooth[138]
Counting boxes[162]
Insets around which the child draws, and then fills in the outline with colored crayons [ 188]
Word building with cut-out alphabet[ 224]