The Ultimate Montessori Blog

In a Montessori House of Children we find that there is no opportunity for creativity. How are children helped in the regard? Secondly, we don’t see any toys or games for children to ‘recreate’ and ‘let themselves out’. What is your comment?

Before answering your question let me ask you what creativity is. The dictionary says ‘it is the capacity to produce’,'to bring something into existence’. So creativity is not restricted only to creative art, as is usually thought to be: but it is all comprehensive. Anything you produce which is worthwhile, is a creative work.

The first and foremost thing that a child does is, that he brings the adult into existence. The quality or texture of this adult depends on how best he was helped in his formative years by the environment in which he lived. Whether he got the maximum benefits or whether he was exposed to deviations. The Montessori Method adapts itself to the child’s needs, recognises his powers and understands his tasks. It studies his psychology and offers assistance to build himself up into a better human adult.

Outward expression is natural to any living being. It is more so in the case of human beings. A child being very much human has great urge to express his experiences and impressions. Richer experiences lead to more intense urge to express. The number of ways of expression like gestures, movements and sounds, increase. He acquires more refined forms like verbal, graphic or pictorial expression. The popularly accepted forms of human expression are verbal through speech, graphic through writing, pictorial through drawing and painting fine arts, mathematics and science may also be classified as fine forms of expression.

Creativity depends on knowledge and skills. Creativity in any form of human expression like mathematics, science, technology etc., calls for knowledge and skills. Children in a House of Children are exposed to rich sensorial experiences which are fundamental at knowledge. Senses are gateways to intellect which is the seat of knowledge. Knowledge is the result of observing, classifying, abstracting and judging. Almost every activity the child performs strengthens this capacity to gain knowledge. Children are helped in acquiring skills like that of language, motor abilities, manipulation of Numbers, experimentation, drawing, painting, music, dance etc. Each of the sensorial activities lays the foundation for one skill or the other.

In a House of Children we do not teach any of these skills. But we do offer direct and indirect help to acquire them creativity is the outward manifestation of an inner maturity. Maturity occurs when knowledge and skills are acquired and consolidated. The children, on their own, repeat the activities to satisfy some inner need, in effort to encourage repetition the same activity with the same material is suggested.

Children do not care much for the ‘toys’ when they have developmental material made to suit their physical and psychological dimensions. Nature provides the child very little time for his total development and he knows no relaxatin. Recreation is meant for people who are tired of their work. But the child is absorbed in his work wholeheartedly. The freedom of choice that the child enjoys in a House of Children enables him to use any length of time and choose another when he wants to. He has the liberty of watching others at work.

The necessity of playing group games in order to ‘let themselves out’ or to ‘learn to behave in a group’ does not arise in a House of Children. The need to ‘let steam out’ is for people with pent up emotions of frustrations caused by the forcing of ideas or opinions by other people. For example, the teacher in a tradition at school who perforce makes the children sit in one place and do what is told In Houses of Children freedom to move and the freedom to choose their work is very evident. A number of collective activities help children become familiar with the norms of behaviour in a particular society.

It should not be understood that toys and games are totally forbidden. It is just that there is no stipulated time schedule for such activities. In a House of Children nothing is forced on them but everything is made possible for them.