The Montessori classroom is an environment prepared by adults for children. It contains everything essential for optimal development.

The prepared environment is characterised by order, beauty, simplicity and real objects. Everything is adapted to the child’s size to encourage independence. A qualified adult and a sufficiently large group of children of different ages are essential elements of the prepared environment.

Casa Copiilor is the Romanian name for “Casa dei Bambini” (Italian). This is the name Maria Montessori gave to the first preschool she founded in 1907.

The Children’s House is a prepared environment for children aged 3 to 6, where they live and grow. It is a safe space with everything they need for optimal human development.

After observing children around the world for many years, Maria Montessori understood that when left free, they have a distinct activity cycle that is so predictable it can even be charted. This cycle, with two peaks and one low point in concentration, lasts approximately three hours.

In Montessori schools, children are given 3 hours of independent, freely chosen, uninterrupted activity with no set schedule, during which they concentrate and repeat their work until they feel satisfied.

When young children engage in an activity that interests them, they will repeat it countless times, apparently for no reason, and stop suddenly only when the inner need that drove them to the activity has been satisfied.

To allow for long, highly focused work cycles, the Montessori method calls for an uninterrupted three-hour work period.

Childhood is a long period, allowing children to learn and explore in a free environment, without pressure from adults. Most social scientists call this activity play (e.g., see Groos, 1901), although Montessori preferred to call it the work of childhood.

There is no doubt that children are serious when they engage in games that meet their developmental needs, and given time and freedom, they will choose purposeful activities, not frivolous or unrealistic ones

A young child’s activity is entirely different from an adult’s. When adults work, they set out to achieve a goal and stop once they have achieved it. Children, on the other hand, do not work toward an external goal, but an internal one. They will repeat an activity until this inner goal is achieved. The unconscious need to repeat helps children coordinate their movements or master a particular skill.

The prepared adult in a Montessori environment does not teach in the traditional sense of the word. They show the child how to work with different materials, then let them explore and experiment freely. This is called a presentation. To be effective, the presentation must be given step by step, using precise, slow movements and as few words as possible.

One of the characteristics of the Montessori method is that children of different ages work together in the same classroom. Age grouping is based on belonging to the same developmental plane. Children aged 3–6 are together in the same preschool classroom; those aged 6–9 attend Primary I, while those aged 9–12 attend Primary II. As the work is individual, children progress at their own pace; across age groups, there is more cooperation than competition.

A logical, progressive approach appropriate to the child’s stage of development. First, the child works with concrete materials that embody an abstract idea (e.g. size or colour). Through sensory experience with the materials, the child absorbs the concepts they convey and gradually becomes able to work with them in the abstract. The child can understand the same idea in symbolic form only as they develop.

These materials were created to help the young child develop and organize their own intelligence. Each material, based on scientific principles, isolates a quality found in the world—for example, color, size or shape—and this isolation focuses the child’s attention on a single quality.

Through repeated use of sensory materials, the child begins to form clear ideas and abstractions. What cannot be explained in words alone is learned through the child’s experience of working with sensory materials.

One of the four areas of activity in the Montessori prepared environment. Practical Life exercises recreate simple everyday household activities: sweeping, dusting, washing dishes, and more.

These purposeful activities are intended to help the child adapt to the new community, learn self-control, and begin to feel like an active member of a social group. As the child works with their hands, their intellect develops and their personality becomes more balanced, as body and mind function as a unified whole.

One aspect of practical life. Short lessons that demonstrate positive social behavior and help children adapt to group life, while teaching them about acceptable behavior in society—practical knowledge that is useful both at school and outside it.

From their first days in a Montessori classroom, children have the opportunity to listen to engagingly told true stories about familiar subjects. Songs and poems are part of everyday classroom life.

The teacher models the art of conversation and listens respectfully to the young participants. Admiring beautiful books with attractive, realistic illustrations is also part of valuing language.

A young child’s vocabulary grows exponentially between the ages of 3 and 6. To satisfy this natural hunger for words, children are introduced to vocabulary related to biology, geometry, geography, and more, as well as words describing the qualities of sensory materials. The child’s absorbent mind stores all these new words “rapidly and with a special intelligence” (Montessori, 1946, p. 10).

Many children know the alphabet, but have not analyzed the sounds that make up words and do not realize that a word is made up of different sounds (phonemic awareness).

From the age of 2 (once the child is speaking fluently), sound games help them become aware of the sounds in words. In England, the rhyme “I spy” is used. The sound of the letter is pronounced, not the letter’s name.

Related to the concept of the absorbent mind (Haines, 1993), this quality is a special capacity of the child known as the capacity for adaptation. This is the process by which a child uses their environment for their own development, thereby becoming part of that environment. By simply living in a particular society, the child absorbs the culture of a particular place and time, assimilating the spirit, customs, ambitions, aspirations and attitudes of that society.

In fact, it is about self-discipline. Discipline in a well-functioning Montessori classroom is not the result of teachers exerting control or using rewards and punishments. It comes from within each child, who becomes able to manage their behavior and make positive choices about their own actions. Self-discipline is closely linked to the development of willpower.

All children are born with a mathematical mind, meaning they are inclined to learn things that enhance their ability to be precise and orderly, to observe, compare and classify.

People have a natural tendency to calculate, measure, reason, abstract, imagine, and create. This vital part of intelligence must be supported and guided in order to develop and function. If mathematics is not part of a young child’s experience, their subconscious will not accept it later.

Children naturally enjoy challenging activities that call on their abilities and give them a sense of growing strength. They beam when they give something their all. For example, a slight child will try with all their might to carry a large tray of full glasses of juice or push a heavy wheelbarrow.

If allowed to imagine a problem, schoolchildren would rather struggle with a more difficult calculation, (1+2+3+4 … +10)x5, than repeat sums such as 3+5 =…. and 6+2….

Behaviours often seen in children, resulting from obstacles in their normal development. These behaviours may be considered negative (a shy child, an aggressive child, etc.) or positive (a passive child, a quiet child). Deviations disappear when the child begins to concentrate on an activity they have freely chosen.

Human development is often far from slow and steady; new abilities can become visible all at once, unexpectedly and with explosive effect. Such learning explosions are the sudden outward manifestation of a long process of inner development. For example, the explosion of speech around the age of 2 is the result of many months of inner preparation and mental development.

When young children repeatedly have the opportunity to enter periods of spontaneous concentration on an activity they have chosen themselves, they begin to show the characteristics of normal development. The child is absorbed in work, grounded in reality, and enjoys quiet and working independently.

Normalized children are happier: enthusiastic, generous and eager to help others. They choose their activities constructively, and the way they work reflects their level of development.

One phenomenon observed in Children’s Houses around the world is that, at around 10:00 a.m., children seem to lose interest in what they are doing, become disorganised, and the noise level in the classroom rises. The children appear tired. However, if the teacher understands that this is simply a false fatigue, the children will carry on working—and work even better than before.