Honoring the Intellectual Aspect of the 6-9 Child

Maria Montessori believed that human development is not upward, steady, and linear but “a sequence of births”, a series of formative stages.  She defined four planes of development for the child burgeoning into an adult: birth to age six, six to twelve, twelve to eighteen, and eighteen to twenty-four. As adults, we can look back upon our lifelong learning similarly, as an ocean of continuing knowledge nudged forward in ebbs and flows of discovery, reflection, and tangents of new interest. One of the many gifts you have given to your child with a Montessori education is a respect for the whole child, which includes not simply academic progress. 

When visiting a Montessori classroom, visitors often notice respect for others, value for peace and concentration, attention to spatial awareness, and love for the environment. In Lower Elementary, we focus on the beginning of the second sequence of a child’s rebirth, what Montessori referred to as a “state of security and tranquility”, through the intellectual, emotional, social, physical, and spiritual life of the child.  As Montessori said, “The elementary child has reached a new level of development. Before he was interested in things: working with his hands, learning their names. Now he is interested mainly in the how and why…the problem of cause and effect.”  

Intellectually, the 6-9 child is curious, imaginative, interested in sharing ideas, and as Montessori put it, “hungry for culture”.  Montessori acknowledged the “importance of feeding the hungry intelligence and opening vast fields of knowledge to eager exploration”.  The center of the 6-9 curriculum, Cosmic Education, emerges in story form and through experiments, arriving at a time when the child craves reasons for things. The Great Lessons at the 6-9 level – the Coming of the Universe, the Earth, and Humankind – spark the imagination by giving a brief glimpse of the whole universe and its contents, thereby whetting the child’s intellectual appetite.  

Montessori believed that “the child’s mental powers are now such that they not only expand but soar, rising to new heights”.  The Cosmic Curriculum, which begins with grand concepts such as physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, and geography and gradually zooms in on botany, zoology, and the human experience.  These areas of the curriculum are studied by all ages in varying levels of sophistication. Science experiments are integrated, as we discuss the Scientific Method. Students work with hands-on materials such as beakers and microscopes to investigate for themselves gravity, magnetism, volcanism, and states of matter. 

Maria Montessori wrote, in her book To Educate the Human Potential: “Since it has been … necessary to give so much to the child, let us give him a vision of the whole universe. The universe is an imposing reality, and an answer to all questions…. All things are part of the universe, and are connected with each other to form one whole unity. The idea helps the mind of the child to become focused, to stop wandering in an aimless quest for knowledge. He is satisfied having found the universal centre of himself with all things.” 

The Montessori classroom is organized both beautifully and sequentially, so that to the naked eye of child and parent, everything a child encounters seems do-able. Information is simplified and studies are approached in small steps, so that students can delve into material year after year and always learn something new. Montessori explained that the environment is prepared this meticulously so the child may be “left in peace to bring an activity to its logical and natural conclusion (and experience) a great sense of achievement”.  

Montessori education is sometimes accused of being either too structured, or not structured enough.  Though this may be a matter of opinion, the intention of the prepared environment and the responsible freedom encouraged of Montessori students is for the child to interact with materials in a hands-on fashion to the ultimate satisfaction of his/her passions. This is when true learning happens.  Students are most productive and engaged when a work is self-chosen, founded on individual interest with the teacher sowing a maximum number of seeds so that a few may find permanent root in your child’s heart and mind.  

Freedom of movement and freedom of choice are inherent to the child’s ownership of his/her learning process, and your child has the luxury of continuing with a work at his/her own pace, for as long as he/she benefits from the pleasure of repeating and encoding the purpose of that activity. That said, Montessori teachers are notorious observers and record-keepers, who follow a scope and sequence that spans nearly twenty subcategories within math, language, reading, and cultural studies. We track the learning of each child individually, present lessons to small or whole groups, and address the variety of learning styles present in the classroom, committed as we are to the Montessori mantra "follow the child".  

All Montessori materials, in addition to providing concrete experiences of abstract concepts, are sequential, developmentally-appropriate, self-correcting, and often made of wood, glass or metal.  The purpose of self-correcting material -- such as language cards which match images or objects with words and/or definitions -- is to encourage a child's self-esteem and self-reliance.  The materials are the teachers, as much as are the guides in each room.  Lessons introduce materials and activities, yet most of the time children work alone or in partner groupings (of their own choosing) so that work appears to be a game, as Montessori believed "work normalizes the child".

Maria Montessori said, “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.”  This belief is demonstrated well with the use of math materials such as the Golden Beads, the Stamp Game, the Bead Frames, the Checkerboard, and Rack and Tubes (also called the Test Tubes).  These materials help reinforce place value, so that the child learns in increments about concepts such as "exchanging" by first trading individual units for the next greatest place value, tens, and so on. Many of us who attended traditional schools marvel at what seems now an obvious visual and kinesthetic experience, since we often learned an abstraction or formula prior to (or in some cases, completely without) sorting, counting, or even touching quantities of things. 

Montessori teachers at the 6-9 level would implore parents to allow the teaching to happen at school with the materials rather than confuse the process by demonstrating "tricks" at home, since a child may resist using the myriad of hands-on materials if shown something deemed "easier", which is in fact much more complicated and introduced at the culmination of the learning cycle. Three years within the breadth and depth of the 6-9 classroom allows a child a never-ending supply of interests and exploration and demonstrates how a lifetime could be spent learning more about these endless questions.