The Montessori Method To Encourage Creativity In Children

For a child, the whole life is a creative adventure which sometimes arises from simple doodles that adults do not understand. 

Before criticizing this absurd drawing, the Montessori method suggests that we be able to offer the “ray of sunshine” that every child needs to then allow him to continue on his way.

Daniel Goleman, in his book The Creative Spirit , tells us about the case of a child, just over 10 years old, who tells his mother that he has to make a horror film for school.

Her mother then buys her some very red cherry jam, and she begins to put it on the furniture.

Then, she lends him a camcorder and lets him use the living room as a film set. This child was called Steven Spielberg.

Here is a simple example to demonstrate the power that adults can have when they are able to act in order to help and not “by cutting the wings”.

This is something that often happens in more traditional schools where we do not encourage the pleasure of learning, but rather the pressure and this search for perfection which stifles the joy, the fantasy …

We invite you today to discover all that the Montessori method advocates.

The Montessori method, fun schools that work

We all know that when it comes to educational innovation, the first country that comes to mind is almost always Finland.

But near Milan there is also a small school called “Regio-Emilia” which has been applying the Montessori method of creativity for over 40 years, as well as Piaget’s theory of children’s evolutionary changes. The results obtained are simply marvelous.

Pedagogues and education experts recognize the remarkable value of this center which is known as “the fun school or the school of games”.

It welcomes children between 2 and 6 years old who have a huge field of action.

They work freely and with multiple materials: they draw, they sculpt, they solve riddles, they visit museums and, above all, we satisfy and promote the child’s natural curiosity during these “sensitive periods” too. important.

An essential aspect of the Regio-Emilia school is the participation of parents. This center was established after World War II on what was previously a former cinema.

The families knew very well what they wanted. They wanted to be able to give birth to free children capable of transforming reality.

Creativity, ultimately, is the ability to be able to think freely while having fun.  They therefore adopted the Montessori method.

How to apply the Montessori method of creativity at home

You have no doubt often been amazed at the drawing that your child or a child who is not yours proudly showed you. 

Our adult gaze, limited and objective, is usually not able to understand why a person has ten legs  (the child will tell you they are dancing) or why dad is smaller on this day. than mom ( maybe he’s a little angry with his dad).

Without wanting to criticize the child’s drawings, without ironising his crazy ideas or wanting to cut off his wings to attach them to the mast of logic and control,  it is necessary to awaken and encourage his creativity even more. 

It will certainly be a valuable and powerful weapon tomorrow. We show you how to get there .

Solutions to encourage children’s creativity

The first thing we need to understand is that a child is not a young adult.

Yet they are professionals in experimentation, and when it comes to trying different things, allowing yourself to make a mistake, learning from it, seeing the world through the game, don’t seek to make them grow in a rush.

Let them play, laugh, discover the world with joy. Realize that they are going to have their greatest creative potential during childhood.

Neurologists tell us that the brain waves of a preteen are richer in Theta waves than in an adult. These waves are linked to the capacity to dream, to create, to innovate …

• To nurture a child’s creativity, we must be able to suggest things to them without exercising control. 
  It will always be better to put him on the path thanks to curiosity than to “oblige” him.
  Avoiding criticism, comparison, or continuous observation by only pointing out mistakes and not qualities will provide the child with an adequate sense of freedom, security, and enjoyment.

A curious fact to take into account is that all those families who knew how to encourage creativity in their children from an early age discovered over time that these children had a natural talent for a particular activity.

The only thing a child needs is to feel safe, to see himself as a person who can explore the world while feeling free, but also to be loved by those close to him.

All these points are essential aspects defended by the Montessori method, hence the rejection of sentences like  “you can’t”, “you don’t know”, or “you will not achieve anything”.

We must avoid all of this. You have to give encouragement and that vital energy that only the sincere love and trust of parents can offer their children.