As many parents start their school journey, we speak to Charlotte Butterfil, Head Teacher at The Butterfly Preschool in London to find out more about Montessori approach to schooling and why she feels it benefits our younger generation.

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I once interviewed someone for a job at our nursery and she thought Montessori was a way of teaching children a foreign language and that during our nursery session we continually spoke to the children in a language that was not English.

Maria Montessori was an Italian physician and educator who created a scientific pedagogy (way of learning) to teach the poorest of children in Italy. The educational method was predominantly child lead. She observed how the children absorbed knowledge from their surroundings, essentially teaching themselves, which in turn lead her to create materials and a classroom that fostered the children’s natural desire to learn and provided freedom for them to choose their own materials.

The modern environment is fast paced and typical of electronic gadgets and plastic toys which bombard a child’s senses, leaving them confused and struggling to adapt. A child’s involvement in this environment is manipulated by adults and steered towards a pre-determined goal. In contrast, a Montessori environment stands out with its use of scientifically designed materials which are simple, child-sized and isolate each sense to develop the intellect through hands-on exploration. Children thus learn in a concrete way rather than abstract memorisation, and they ‘teach’ themselves by self- correcting. A Montessori environment gives the child the freedom of choice, with uninterrupted learning sessions; because when you follow the interests of a child and give them an opportunity to experiment at their own pace, you unleash a newfound desire to learn.

As well as covering Math, Literacy and Science, Montessori puts a huge emphasis on practical life skills to aid independence and self-esteem. The child learns about pouring, chopping, peeling, tying shoes, folding clothes and in today’s society where parents tend to do everything for their child these are essential skills for them to learn before going to the next stage of schooling. We often get comments from leaving parents, how their child’s new teacher at school has comments on how well they were prepared for school and being an independent child.

The founders of Google, Wikipedia and Amazon all went to a Montessori school where independent learning, thinking and problem solving were encouraged to achieve a goal. To me this grounding in a child’s education is something any parent would want to offer, and the first five years of child development is crucial to their health, wellbeing, and the overall trajectory of their lives in a variety of ways. A Montessori environment helps a child to distinguish, categorize and relate new information to what they already know, making them intelligent observers of the environment, at the same time unconsciously preparing them for core studies in the future. I would urge every parent to look into what Montessori can offer their child in the first stages of their education.

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The Butterfly Preschool shared some Montessori methods with their pupils during the pandemic.