“Repetition is the secret of perfection” – Maria Montessori, The Discovery of the Child, p. 92
Imagine a young child working with the pink tower. What does this child do? He/she practices stacking the tower as her teacher has shown her. He/she experiments with different configurations for the cubes. What happens if she places the smallest cube on the bottom, then the largest on top? What about making two towers? What will they look like if she lines them up horizontally on the rug, instead? He/she discovers cause and effect, relationships in dimension, lessons in gravity, and application of previously acquired knowledge.
Montessori teachers realize that when children are given the ability to learn about what interests them, they are more actively engaged and cognizant of their own learning.
Attached are a few pictures of the students doing the same at King’s Wood Montessori. You will see a 3 yr. old who has been experimenting with a different set up using the Montessori Brown Stairs. Initially, he worked with the material alone, but now he enjoys working with his friends as they further explore the material.
In the subsequent pictures you will see how creative the students get while using the brown stairs and the pink tower together! They not only engage their sense of sight, but also their sense of sound as they roll a marble down their creations.
Lastly, you will see D another 3 yr. old working with the ‘cube of trinomial’. Once he felt satisfied in his mastery of the binomial and trinomial cube (prequel to the cube of trinomial), Jessie, the lead teacher, presented him with the ‘cube of trinomial. She observed that for several days Dean had worked with the cube of trinomial at least a dozen times during the daily uninterrupted work cycle. Through repetition he became cognizant of the slightest differences and variations in his work. We fail to count how many times he has worked with it so far J
It is important to reiterate that for the student the goal of repetition is not to recreate, instead it is to internalize the concept and feel the satisfaction while doing it thus making the knowledge acquired permanent.
