Did you see today's Google Doodle? In celebration of Maria Montessori's birthday, the doodle depicts various learning toys for young children.
Maria Montessori and Shinichi Suzuki both realized the tremendous power of the young child's developing mind. Both observed that children naturally absorb their native language without being taught by anyone else; that children have an innate desire to learn and do so first by imitating what they experience in their environment.
Montessori wrote on providing children a "prepared environment," one in which learning opportunities were present for them to discover on their own as their natural desires direct them to do. Suzuki also utilizes this principle; in this case, the prepared environment is one that plays beautiful music constantly, repetitively, so it is learned as well as one learns his or her own native language.The next step, then, is only to teach the child how to reproduce those sounds with a beautiful tone and sensitive soul.
Interested in learning more? Explore these works by or about these two brilliant visionaries:
- The Absorbent Mind, Maria Montessori
- The Child in the Family, Maria Montessori
- The Child, Society, and the World, Maria Montessori
- Nurtured by Love, Shinichi Suzuki
- Shinichi Suzuki: The Man and His Philosophy, Evelyn Hermann
- Ability Development from Age Zero, Shinichi Suzuki
- Young Children's Talent Education and Its Method, Shinichi Suzuki
