Are you trying to decide if the Montessori method is right for your preschooler, and for you? The Montessori method is a calm, encouraging, and respectful approach to teaching young children that will help ensure your child's lifelong success before he or she enters the first grade.

     Dr. Maria Montessori was an education pioneer a century ago, opening her first preschool classroom for developmentally normal children in 1906. Previously, she achieved levels of academic success with the developmentally disabled and children from lower socioeconomic groups that had not been considered possible among educators of the day.

     Montessori's approach was based on the simple concept of tailoring education to children's natural tendencies instead of imposing rules of the adult world on them. Montessori observed that children are extraordinarily curious and physical, and she sought to reward these attributes instead of condemning them. Montessori realized that children learn best by discovery and through experimentation. These observations led her to develop materials that concretely illustrated abstract principles of mathematics, language, and science and contained a built-in control of error to allow the child to self-correct.