Montessori Method To Promote Creativity In Children

For a child, life is a creative adventure that sometimes starts from simple scribbles that adults do not understand. The Montessori method suggests that, before criticizing that bizarre drawing, we should be able to give the “ray of light” that every child needs and then allow him to continue on his way. Explore in freedom.

In his book The Creative Spirit , Daniel Goleman explains the case of a boy who, at only 10 years old, tells his mother that he has to make a “horror short” for school. The mother then buys cherry jam, the reddest, and begins to dirty the cupboards.

Afterward, the woman leaves her son a camera and allows him to set up his own film studio in the living room. That kid was Steven Spielberg.

It is an example that goes to show the power that adults can have if we are able to act as facilitators, and not as “wing cutters”. Something that often happens in traditional school, where the pleasure of learning is not promoted, but pressure and that search for perfection where joy, fantasy are drowned out …

Everything that praised the Montessori method. We invite you to discover it.

Montessori method, fun schools that work

We all know that when it comes to talking about educational innovation, the first country that comes to mind is almost always Finland. But in reality, there are many centers around the world who are starting a wonderful revolution.

Despite the fact that today talking about creativity raises passions and flies flags, in reality, accepting its benefits in the school environment has been a very slow process.

This is what Sir Ken Robinson, the famous British writer and lecturer, explains to us. As he himself explains, the school was conceived during the Industrial Revolution as a tool to support chain production.

The Montessori approach

María Montessori was an innovative breath capable of challenging this approach to the school, preventing a child from being just the classic student who gives answers based on a syllabus.

Montessori schools are educational centers that work. Beyond a common and iron agenda based on the simple storage and retrieval of information by the child, autonomy, creativity as a form of freedom and a way of obtaining meaningful knowledge is exalted above all.

Unfortunately, today there are too many other pedagogical approaches determined to “kill creativity”, and they do so for a very specific reason: because their objective is not to transform, it is not to create, but to conserve, maintain …

The first thing to understand is that a child is not a small adult. However, they are professionals in experimenting and trying different things, in allowing themselves to make a mistake, in learning from it, in seeing the world through play.

Understand that they will have the greatest creative potential during childhood. Neurologists tell us that the brain waves of a preteen are richer in theta waves than in an adult. These waves are related to the ability to dream, to create, to innovate …

To nurture a child’s creativity we must be able to suggest things to him without exercising control. It will always be better to approach it through curiosity than to “force”. In turn, avoiding criticism, comparisons or continuous observations pointing out only the errors and not the virtues, will offer the child an adequate sense of freedom, security and pleasure.

A curious fact to keep in mind is that all those families that have been able to encourage creativity in their children early, have discovered over time that these boys and girls have a natural talent for a particular activity.

The only thing a child needs is to feel safe, to see himself as a person capable of exploring the world feeling free but also loved by his loved ones. All of these are essential aspects that the Montessori method defended, there where phrases like “you can’t”, “you don’t know”, or “you won’t get anywhere” never fit .

We have to avoid all this, it is necessary to give encouragement and that vital energy that only the sincere love and trust of fathers and mothers can offer their children.

Images courtesy Soosh