Montessori believed that children can teach themselves in a “prepared environment” with self-correcting apparatus for learning (Daniels & Gamper, 2011, p. 62).
In prepared environments, children are active explorers of their environment, learn at their own pace, and choose variety of materials and activities that emphasize learning through the senses.
When I was trained the different Montessori works, I totally immersed myself into them. For the first time I saw these works, I thought that they were like toys. But when I explored more, and knew the theories and functions behind them, it pushed me to master them and demo them precisely to children.
The whole training
required both high skills and high challenges. I was quite enjoy exploring these works. I think at that moment I experienced cognitive flow.
Every day, children are allowed to work in the montessori workplace one hour doing whatever works they like. It quite like a flow room that provide kids to experience flow.
The student was concentrating on hitting nails with a small hammer.