Honoring the Physical Aspect of the 6-9 Child

Most forms of education focus primarily on the intellectual, but education is not limited to math, language, and cultural studies. It also encompasses an education of the senses, which in Montessori education includes art, fine motor (such as pouring, drawing, and writing), and gross motor development. Physical education evolves through freedom of movement, exploration of nature, fitness, and hand-eye coordination. As Montessori said, “Since it is through movement that the will realizes itself, we should assist a child in his attempts to put his will into action.”

Physically, the 6-9 child has longer limbs and strong muscles, is more resistant to disease, and shows a fascination with anatomy and all kinds of bodily functions, noises, and/or scatological jokes.  The Montessori environment appears most different from traditional educational settings in its physical dimension. Visitors notice that students move freely, often engaging in individual or partner work, rather than all students facing a teacher. 

Maria Montessori, a scientist trained in observation, revolutionized educational practices in the early 20th century when she announced, "free choice is one of the highest of all the mental processes." She quickly clarified in her involvement with street children of Rome, Italy, "To give a child liberty is not to abandon him to himself… To let the child do as he likes when he has not yet developed any powers of control is to betray the idea of freedom…The essence of independence is to be able to do something for one’s self." Freedom within limits, choice within order, and exploration within sequence are core to the Montessori method, yet above all exists respect for the child.

Prior to Montessori, education in America was heavily influenced by John Dewey, who modeled learning after industrial mass production.  Sadly, even now in the early 21st century, public education is dominated by a business model that treats children like products. Maria Montessori was ahead of her time in valuing the child as a source of inspiration, not simply a by-product of testing.  Montessori observed a child's need for physical contact with materials in exploration. As Montessori said so eloquently, "If teaching is to be effective with young children, it must assist ... independence… activities which they can perform themselves ... Any child who is self-sufficient... reflects in his joy and sense of achievement the image of human dignity, which is derived from a sense of independence.

The 6-9 child has an enhanced sense of personal space and spatial relationships. Montessori classrooms are tailored to the physical development of the child.  Shelves, desks, and materials are at a child’s level, and freedom of movement is incorporated to refine gross and fine motor skills and respect the child’s desire to have physical control over objects.  Materials are sequential, organized, attractive, and accessible to the child. One of the main tenets of Montessori education is the prepared environment and teacher as guide. As Maria Montessori said, "The environment must ... lend interest to activity and invite the child to conduct his own experiences...Education is a natural process carried out by the human individual and is acquired not by listening to words, but by experiences in the environment."  

Montessori also said, "No social problem is as universal as the oppression of the child." What other education reformer has ever been so on the side of the child as Maria Montessori? She pre-saged our modern predicament where the activity level of children becomes an issue of control for adults. In Montessori classrooms, the power center of the adult is transformed to the individual and the community, each respecting one another through the physical realm. Montessori education values, among other things, the physical life of the child. In traditional classrooms, children are confined to chairs and desks to engage in simultaneous activities under the supervision of a teacher. In a Montessori classroom, as Montessori herself described, “the environment itself will teach the child, if every error he makes is manifest to him, without the intervention of a parent or teacher, who should remain a quiet observer of all that happens.” 

How is this possible? As a scientist, Montessori followed the scientific method of observation, hypothesis, and experiment. Her values were the same as those of current Montessorians: environment, independence, and experience. They work together in many capacities, for example: at PE, lifting a parachute together.

The prepared environment allows students optimum freedom of movement through sequential organization of materials which are self-correcting, enhancing the child's independence. In addition, students frequently arrange materials at rugs on the floor. At Eton, on one of the first days of school, students attend a rules assembly that illuminates ways in which the physical aspect of the child is honored: interdependence of mind and body, respect and care for the body, refining and strengthening physical skills, and purposeful movement. As Montessori said, “Seemingly simple acts of unrolling a rug, carrying a work on a tray, keeping all material within a space, and replacing items at the end of a work are practices not only in diligence but in coordination and concentration… We must, therefore, quit our roles as jailers and instead take care to prepare an environment in which we do as little as possible to exhaust the child with our surveillance and instruction.”

Independence is key to the 6-9 child’s development, however independence does not mean unlimited freedom. Lower elementary students use work plans in addition to sequential materials, in order to hone time management skills. They are in charge of their learning, what Montessori called “auto-education”: “The child, in fact, once he feels sure of himself, will no longer seek the approval of authority after every step.” Many materials (such as rugs, scales, and pattern blocks) encourage fine and gross motor development. Students learn to listen to their bodies and have snack when their bodies require it. Children no longer ask, “May I have snack?”  They have placemats and know how to wash their hands.

Working, interacting, and eating are personal experiences. A prepared environment is scaffolding for self-determination learned through independence and strengthened through experience. Maria Montessori understood over a century ago that “growth comes from activity, not from intellectual understanding.” Montessori education is not memorized knowledge but respect for all aspects of a person: intellectual, emotional, social, spiritual, and physical.  Montessori charged us to “respect all the reasonable forms of activity in which the child engages and try to understand them… Watching a child makes it obvious that the development of his mind comes through his movement.”

Current educational and scientific research corroborates Maria Montessori’s hundred-year-old vision, as author Richard Louv explains in his book Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. Louv notices that “within the space of a few decades, the way children understand and experience nature has changed radically…Today, kids are aware of the global threats to the environment—but their physical contact, their intimacy with nature, is fading.” Louv connects avoidance of direct experience in nature with a societal sense of doom for forests and deserts, oceans and lakes which previously evoked joy and solitude. Students plant herbs and weed in gardens, have lessons in the outdoor habitat, and run free at recess and during PE under evergreen trees that reach a hundred feet in the air. 

Without this daily contact with the natural environment, Louv warns, “the young spend less and less of their lives in natural surroundings, their senses narrow, physiologically and psychologically, and this reduces the richness of human experience.” Louv calls this modern phenomenon “nature deficit disorder,” a term seemingly in-line with common diagnoses for those whose energies would benefit from both freedom and structure. Louv reminds us, “Thoughtful exposure of youngsters to nature can even be a powerful form of therapy for attention-deficit disorders and other maladies. As one scientist puts it, we can now assume that just as children need good nutrition and adequate sleep, they may very well need contact with nature.”