Montessori on 3-year-olds
“[The 3-year-old] is continuously busy, happy, always doing something with his hands. His intelligence no longer develops merely by existing: it needs a world of things which provide him with motives for activity…
It has been called ‘the blessed age of play’ - something people have always been aware of, but only recently has it been subjected to scientific study.
In Europe & America, where the speed of civilized life causes an ever greater cleavage between man and nature, people try to meet this need by offering the children an immense quantity of toys, when their real needs are for stimuli of quite a different kind. At that age children need to touch and handle all kinds of things, yet hardly any real articles are placed at their disposal, and most of those they can see they are forbidden to touch…
But in those countries where the toy making industry is less advanced, you will find children with quite different tastes. They are also calmer, more sensible and happy. Their one idea is to take part in the activities going on about them. They are more like ordinary folk, using and handling the same things as the grown-ups. When the mother washes out some linen, or makes some bread and little cakes, the child joins in. Though his action is imitative, it is a selective and intelligent imitation, through which the child prepares himself to play his part in the world.”
(ibid.)
