“The mathematic mind is a mind that is especially interested in mathematics. Rather than find them boring and absurd, they find them interesting and absorbing. It is a fact that most children in our Montessori schools manage to achieve great enthusiasm while working with mathematics. Is the preparation of their minds that allows them to reach this pleasure."
Maria Montessori, London Lectures, 1946, p 41
Mathematics has always been a difficult subject for students. Many children have developed phobias and barriers towards mathematics, which prevail into adulthood, thus limiting their potential. This limitation implies problems of learning, resulting in the child a sense of inferiority.
Mathematics for common …show more content…
The Montessori materials prepare the child indirectly to the formal study of mathematics. This makes it the natural way and they learn with joy and follow a specific pattern that goes from the concrete to the abstract and are created specifically in order to build knowledge slowly and concretely, always using first the senses. These indirect preparations, or the lack of them, are one of the causes that awaken in children a love or hate for mathematics. They are essential in the construction process of the child and ensure the child's success at work.
"The hand is the teacher of the mind.
We should never give to the brain more than we give to the hand. Merely impressions do not enter his mind, they form it."
Montessori Maria, “The Absorbent Mind” Holt & Company, New York, 1995.
One of the genius of Maria Montessori is to observe each of the difficulties that the child will be found throughout the learning process, and to isolate each of them beforehand preparing him for the big event (writing, reading and math).
Students who learn math only by memorization often have no real understanding or ability to put their skills to use in everyday life. Learning comes much more easily when they work with concrete materials that show what is taking place in a given mathematical process.
The concrete Montessori Math materials are perhaps the best-known and most imitated elements of Dr. Montessori’s work. These simply and beautiful materials