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Project Gutenberg's Montessori Elementary Materials, by Maria MontessoriThis eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and withalmost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away orre-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License includedwith this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.orgTitle: Montessori Elementary MaterialsThe Advanced Montessori MethodAuthor: Maria MontessoriTranslator: Arthur LivingstonRelease Date: June 4, 2013 [EBook #42869]Language: EnglishCharacter set encoding: UTF-8*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MONTESSORI ELEMENTARY MATERIALS ***Produced by Alicia Williams, Emmy and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book wasproduced from scanned images of public domain materialfrom the Google Print project.) Music files created by LindaCantoni.[Transcriber's Notes: Bold text is surrounded by =equal signs= anditalic text by _underscores_. Superscripted text will be precede by a ^and surrounded by {braces}.Two symbols were used to show stressed and unstressed syllables. Thesehave been represented by U and --.]THE MONTESSORI ELEMENTARY MATERIAL[Illustration: The first Montessori Elementary Class in America, openedin Rivington Street, New York, May, 1916.] _THE ADVANCED MONTESSORI METHOD_ THE MONTESSORI ELEMENTARY MATERIALBY MARIA MONTESSORIAUTHOR OF THE MONTESSORI METHOD, PEDAGOGICALANTHROPOLOGY, ETC.TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN BYARTHUR LIVINGSTONASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ITALIAN AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY_WITH FORTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHSAND WITH NUMEROUS DIAGRAMS_ [Illustration]NEW YORKFREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANYPUBLISHERS_Copyright, 1917, by_ FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY_All rights reserved, including that of translation intoforeign languages._ ACKNOWLEDGMENTThe patent rights in the Montessori apparatus and material arecontrolled, in the United States and Canada, by The House of Childhood,Inc., 16 Horatio Street, New York. The publishers are indebted to themfor the photographs showing the Grammar Boxes.TRANSLATOR'S NOTESo far as Dr. Montessori's experiments contain the affirmation of a newdoctrine and the illustration of a new method in regard to the teachingof Grammar, Reading and Metrics, the following pages are, we hope, afaithful rendition of her work. But it is only in these respects thatthe chapters devoted to these subjects are to be considered atranslation. It will be observed that Dr. Montessori's text is not onlya theoretical treatise but also an actual text-book for the teaching ofItalian grammar, Italian reading and Italian metrics to young pupils.Her exercises constitute a rigidly tested material: her Italian wordlists are lists which, in actual practise, have accomplished theirpurpose; her grammatical categories with their relative illustration arethose actually mastered by her Italian students; her reading selectionsand her metrical analyses are those which, from an offering doubtlessfar more extensive, actually survived the experiment of use in class. It is obvious that no such value can be claimed for any translation ofthe srcinal material. The categories of Italian grammar are not exactlythe categories of English grammar. The morphology and, to a certainextent, the syntax of the various parts of speech differ in the twolanguages. The immediate result is that the Montessori material offersmuch that is inapplicable and fails to touch on much that is essentialto the teaching of English grammar. The nature and extent of thedifficulties thus arising are more fully set forth in connection withspecific cases in our text. Suffice it here to indicate that theEnglish material offered below is but approximately experimental, approximately scientific. The constitution of a definitive Montessorimaterial for English grammar and the definitive manner and order of itspresentment must await the results of experiments in actual use. For theclearer orientation of such eventual experiments we offer, even forthose parts of Italian grammar which bear no relation to English, avirtually complete translation of the srcinal text; venturing meanwhilethe suggestion that such studies as Dr. Montessori's treatise on theteaching of Italian noun and adjective inflections--entirely foreign toEnglish--may prove valuable to all teachers of modern languages. Whileit might seem desirable to isolate such superfluous material from the English grammar given below, we decided to retain the relativeparagraphs in their actual position in the Italian work, in order topreserve the literal integrity of the srcinal method. Among ouradditions to the text we may cite the exercises on the possessivepronouns--identified by Dr. Montessori with the possessiveadjectives--the interrogatives and the comparison of adjectives andadverbs.Even where, as regards morphology, a reasonably close adaptation of theItalian material to English uses has been possible, it by no meansfollows that the pedagogical problems involved remain the same. Theteaching of the relative pronoun, for instance, is far more complicatedin English than in Italian; in the sense that the steps to be taken bythe child are for English more numerous and of a higher order. Likewisefor the verb, if Italian is more difficult as regards variety of forms,it is much more simple as regards negation, interrogation andprogressive action. We have made no attempt to be consistent in adaptingthe translation to such difficulties. In general we have treated theparts of speech in the order in which they appear in the Italian text,though actual experiment may prove that some other order is desirablefor the teaching of English grammar. The English material given below isthus in part a translation of the srcinal exercises in Italian, in partnew. In cases where it proved impossible to utilize any of the Italianmaterial, an attempt has been made to find sentences illustrating thesame pedagogical principle and involving the same number and characterof mental processes as are required by the srcinal text.The special emphasis laid by Dr. Montessori upon selections from Manzoniis due simply to the peculiar conditions surrounding the teaching oflanguage in Italy, where general concepts of the national language areaffected by the existence of powerful dialects and the unstable natureof the grammar, vocabulary and syntax of the national literature. Wehave made no effort to find a writer worthy of being set up as a likeauthority, since no such problem exists for the American and Englishpublic. Our citations are drawn to a large extent from the Book ofKnowledge and from a number of classics. Occasionally for specialreasons we have translated the Italian srcinal. The chapter on Italianmetrics has been translated entire as an illustration of method; whereasthe portion relating to English is, as explained below, entirely ofspeculative character. To Miss Helen Parkhurst and Miss Emily H. Greenman thanks are due forthe translation of the chapters on Arithmetic, Geometry, and Drawing.CONTENTSPART IGRAMMARTRANSLATOR'S NOTE viiCHAPTER PAGEI. The Transition from the Mechanical to the IntellectualDevelopment of Language 3II. WORD STUDY 12Suffixes and Prefixes 13Suffixes 13Prefixes 17Compound Words 18Word-Families 20III. ARTICLE AND NOUN 22Singular and Plural 25Masculine and Feminine 27Singular and Plural in English 33IV. LESSONS--COMMANDS 39Nouns 40Commands on Nouns 48V. ADJECTIVES 51Analyses 51Descriptive Adjectives 51Permutations 55Inflection of Adjectives 56Logical and Grammatical Agreement of Nouns and Adjectives 59Descriptive Adjectives 61Adjectives of Quantity 63Ordinals 64Demonstrative Adjectives 64Possessive Adjectives 65Comparison of Adjectives 65VI. VERBS 66Analyses 66Permutations 68Lessons and Commands on the Verb 69Lessons with Experiments 74VII. PREPOSITIONS 77Analyses 77Permutations 80Lessons and Commands on Prepositions 81
