THE MONTESSORI ELEMENTARY MATERIAL

The first Montessori Elementary Class in America, opened in Rivington Street, New York, May, 1916.

THE MONTESSORI
ELEMENTARY MATERIAL

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The patent rights in the Montessori apparatus and material are controlled, in the United States and Canada, by The House of Childhood, Inc., 16 Horatio Street, New York. The publishers are indebted to them for the photographs showing the Grammar Boxes.

[vii]

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

So far as Dr. Montessori's experiments contain the affirmation of a new doctrine and the illustration of a new method in regard to the teaching of Grammar, Reading and Metrics, the following pages are, we hope, a faithful rendition of her work. But it is only in these respects that the chapters devoted to these subjects are to be considered a translation. It will be observed that Dr. Montessori's text is not only a theoretical treatise but also an actual text-book for the teaching of Italian grammar, Italian reading and Italian metrics to young pupils. Her exercises constitute a rigidly "tested" material: her Italian word lists are lists which, in actual practise, have accomplished their purpose; her grammatical categories with their relative illustration are those actually mastered by her Italian students; her reading selections and her metrical analyses are those which, from an offering doubtless far more extensive, actually survived the experiment of use in class.

It is obvious that no such value can be claimed for any "translation" of the original material. The categories of Italian grammar are not exactly the categories of English grammar. The morphology and, to a certain extent, the syntax of the various parts of speech differ in the two languages. The immediate result is that the Montessori material offers much that is inapplicable and fails to touch on much that is essential to the teaching of English grammar. The nature and extent of the difficulties thus arising are more fully set forth in connection with specific cases in[viii] our text. Suffice it here to indicate that the English material offered below is but approximately "experimental," approximately scientific. The constitution of a definitive Montessori material for English grammar and the definitive manner and order of its presentment must await the results of experiments in actual use. For the clearer orientation of such eventual experiments we offer, even for those parts of Italian grammar which bear no relation to English, a virtually complete translation of the original text; venturing meanwhile the suggestion that such studies as Dr. Montessori's treatise on the teaching of Italian noun and adjective inflections—entirely foreign to English—may prove valuable to all teachers of modern languages. While it might seem desirable to isolate such superfluous material from the "English grammar" given below, we decided to retain the relative paragraphs in their actual position in the Italian work, in order to preserve the literal integrity of the original method. Among our additions to the text we may cite the exercises on the possessive pronouns—identified by Dr. Montessori with the possessive adjectives—the interrogatives and the comparison of adjectives and adverbs.

Even where, as regards morphology, a reasonably close adaptation of the Italian material to English uses has been possible, it by no means follows that the pedagogical problems involved remain the same. The teaching of the relative pronoun, for instance, is far more complicated in English than in Italian; in the sense that the steps to be taken by the child are for English more numerous and of a higher order. Likewise for the verb, if Italian is more difficult as regards variety of forms, it is much more simple as regards negation, interrogation and progressive action. We have made no attempt to be consistent in adapting the[ix] translation to such difficulties. In general we have treated the parts of speech in the order in which they appear in the Italian text, though actual experiment may prove that some other order is desirable for the teaching of English grammar. The English material given below is thus in part a translation of the original exercises in Italian, in part new. In cases where it proved impossible to utilize any of the Italian material, an attempt has been made to find sentences illustrating the same pedagogical principle and involving the same number and character of mental processes as are required by the original text.

The special emphasis laid by Dr. Montessori upon selections from Manzoni is due simply to the peculiar conditions surrounding the teaching of language in Italy, where general concepts of the national language are affected by the existence of powerful dialects and the unstable nature of the grammar, vocabulary and syntax of the national literature. We have made no effort to find a writer worthy of being set up as a like authority, since no such problem exists for the American and English public. Our citations are drawn to a large extent from the "Book of Knowledge" and from a number of classics. Occasionally for special reasons we have translated the Italian original. The chapter on Italian metrics has been translated entire as an illustration of method; whereas the portion relating to English is, as explained below, entirely of speculative character.

To Miss Helen Parkhurst and Miss Emily H. Greenman thanks are due for the translation of the chapters on Arithmetic, Geometry, and Drawing.

[xi]
[x]

CONTENTS

[xvi]
[xvii]

ILLUSTRATIONS

[1]

PART I
GRAMMAR

[2]
[3]

MONTESSORI ELEMENTARY MATERIAL

I

In the "Children's Houses" we had reached a stage of development where the children could write words and even sentences. They read little slips on which were written different actions which they were to execute, thus demonstrating that they had understood them. The material for the development of writing and reading consisted of two alphabets: a larger one with vowels and consonants in different colors, and a smaller one with all the letters in one color.

(In English, to diminish the phonetic difficulties of the language, combinations of vowels and consonants, known as phonograms, are used. The phonograms with few exceptions have constant sounds and little attention is paid to the teaching of the separate values of the different letters: not until the child has built up his rules inductively does he realize the meaning of separate vowel symbols.)

However, the actual amount of progress made was not very precisely ascertained. We could be sure only that the children had acquired the mechanical technique of[4] writing and reading and were on the way to a greater intellectual development along these lines. Their progress, however extensive it may have been, could be called little more than a foundation for their next step in advance, the elementary school. What beyond all question was accomplished with the little child in the first steps of our method was to establish the psycho-motor mechanism of the written word by a slow process of maturation such as takes place in the natural growth of articulate speech; in other words, by methodically exercising psycho-motor paths.

Later on the child's mind is able to make use of the successive operations performed with the written language which has been thus built up by the child as a matter of mechanical execution (writing) and to a certain extent of intelligent interpretation (reading). Normally this is an established fact at the age of five. When the child begins to think and to make use of the written language to express his rudimentary thinking, he is ready for elementary work; and this fitness is a question not of age or other incidental circumstance but of mental maturity.

We have said, of course, that the children stayed in the "Children's House" up to the age of seven; nevertheless they learned to write, to count, to read, and even to do a certain amount of simple composition. It is clear, accordingly, that they had gone some distance in the elementary grade as regards both age and educational development. However, what they had actually accomplished beyond the mechanical technique of writing was more or less difficult to estimate. We can now say that our later experiments have not only clarified this situation, but enabled us to take the children much farther along than[5] before.

This only proves, however, that on beginning elementary grade work we did not depart from the "Children's House" idea; on the contrary we returned to it to give distinct realization to the nebulous hopes with which our first course concluded. Hence the "Children's House" and the lower grades are not two distinct things as is the case with the Fröbel Kindergarten and the ordinary primary school—in fact, they are one and the same thing, the continuation of an identical process.

Let us return then to the "Children's House" and consider the child of five and one-half years. To-day in those "Children's Houses" which have kept up with the improvements in our method the child is actually started on his elementary education. From the second alphabet of the "Children's House" we go on to a third alphabet. Here the movable letters are a great deal smaller and are executed in model hand-writing. There are twenty specimens of each letter, whereas formerly there were but four; furthermore, there are three complete alphabets, one white, one black, and one red. There are, therefore, sixty copies of each letter of the alphabet. We include also all the punctuation marks: period, comma, accents (for Italian), apostrophe, interrogation and exclamation points. The letters are made of plain glazed paper.

The uses of this alphabet are many; so before we stop to examine them let us look somewhat ahead. Everybody has recognized the naturalness of the exercise, used in the "Children's House," where the children placed a card bearing the name of an object on the object referred to. This was the first lesson in reading. We could see that the child knew how to read as soon as he was able to identify the object indicated on the card. In schools all over[6] the world a similar procedure would, I imagine, be considered logical. I suppose that in all the schools where the objective method is used much the same thing is done; and this is found to be not a hindrance but a help to the child in learning the names of objects. As regards the teaching of the noun, accordingly, we have been using methods already in use—the objective method, with practical exercises. But why should we restrict such methods to the noun? Is the noun not just as truly a part of speech as the adjective, or the verb? If there is a method by which the knowledge of a noun is made easy, may there not be similar ways of facilitating the learning of all the other parts of speech (article, adjective, verb, pronoun, adverb, interjection, conjunction, and preposition)?

When a slip with the interpreted word is placed on the object corresponding to it, the children are actually distinguishing the noun from all the other parts of speech. They are learning intuitively to define it. The first step has thus been taken into the realm of grammar. But if this "reading" has brought the child directly into word classification, the transition has not been for him so abrupt as might at first appear. The child has built all his words with the movable alphabet, and he has, in addition, written them. He has thus traversed a two-fold preparatory exercise involving, first, the analysis of the sounds and, second, the analysis of the words in their meaning. In fact, we have seen that, as the child reads, it is his discovery of the tonic accent that brings him to recognize the word. The child has begun to analyze not only the sounds and accent but also the form of the word.[1]

[7]

How absurd it would seem to suggest a study of phonology and morphology in a nursery with four-year-old children as investigators! Yet our children have accomplished this very thing! The analysis was the means of attaining the word. It was what made the child able to write without effort. Why should such a procedure be useful for single words and not so for connected discourse? Proceeding to the classification of words by distinguishing the noun from all other words, we have really advanced into the analysis of connected speech, just as truly as, by having the sand-papered letters "touched" and the word pronounced, we took the first step into the analysis of words. We have only to carry the process farther and perhaps we shall succeed in getting the analysis of whole sentences, just as we succeeded in getting at the composition of words—discovering meanwhile a method which will prove efficacious in leading the child to write his thoughts more perfectly than would seem possible at such a tender age.

For some time, then, we have been actually in the field of grammar. It is a question simply of continuing along the same path. The undertaking may indeed seem hazardous. Never mind! That "awful grammar," that horrible bugaboo, no less terrible than the frightful method, once in use, of learning to read and write, may perhaps become a delightful exercise, a loving guide to lead the child along pleasant pathways to the discovery of things he has actually performed. Yes, the child will suddenly find himself, one day, in possession of a little composition, a little "work of art," that has issued from[8] his own pen! And he will be as happy over it as he was when for the first time words were formed by his tiny hands!

How different grammar will seem to the young pupil, if, instead of being the cruel assassin that tears the sentence to pieces so that nothing can be understood, it becomes the amiable and indispensable help to "the construction of connected discourse"! It used to be so easy to say: "The sentence is written! Please leave it alone!" Why put asunder what God has joined? Why take away from a sentence its meaning, the very thing which gave it life? Why make of it a mere mass of senseless words? Why spoil something already perfect just for the annoyance of plunging into an analysis which has no apparent purpose? Indeed, to impose upon people who can already read the task of reducing every word to its primal sounds, would be to demand of them an effort of will so gigantic that only a professional philologist could apply himself to it with the necessary diligence, and then only because he has his own particular interests and aims involved in such work. Yet the four-year-old child, when he passes from those meaningless sounds to the composition of a whole, which corresponds to an idea and represents a useful and wonderful conquest, is just as attentive as the philologist and perhaps even more enthusiastic. He will find the same joy in grammar, if, starting from analyses, it gains progressively in significance, acquiring, step by step, a greater interest, working finally up to a climax, up to the moment, that is, when the finished sentence is before him, its meaning clear and felt in its subtlest essences. The child has created something beautiful, full grown and perfect at its birth, not now to be tampered with by anybody!

[9]

The analysis of sounds which, in our method, leads to spontaneous writing, is not, to be sure, adapted to all ages. It is when the child is four or four and a half, that he shows the characteristically childlike passion for such work, which keeps him at it longer than at any other age, and leads him to develop perfection in the mechanical aspect of writing. Similarly the analytical study of parts of speech, the passionate lingering over words, is not for children of all ages. It is the children between five and seven who are the word-lovers. It is they who show a predisposition toward such study. Their undeveloped minds can not yet grasp a complete idea with distinctness. They do, however, understand words. And they may be entirely carried away by their ecstatic, their tireless interest in the parts of speech.

It is true that our whole method was born of heresy. The first departure from orthodoxy was in holding that the child can best learn to write between the ages of four and five. We are now constrained to advance another heretical proposition: children should begin the study of grammar between the ages of five and a half and seven and a half, or eight!

The idea that analysis must be preceded by construction was a matter of mere prejudice. Only things produced by nature must be analyzed before they can be understood. The violet, for instance, is found perfect in nature. We have to tear off the petals, cut the flower into sections to see how it grew. But in making an artificial violet we do just the opposite. We prepare the stems piece by piece; then we work out the petals, cutting, coloring, and ironing them one by one. The preparation of the stamens, even of the glue with which we put the whole together, is a distinct process. A few simple-minded people,[10] with a gift for light manual labor, take unbounded delight in these single operations, these wonderfully varied steps which all converge to the creation of a pretty flower; the beauty of which depends on the amount of patience and skill applied to the work on the individual parts.

Analysis, furthermore, is involved quite as much in building as in taking to pieces. The building of a house is an analytical process. The stones are treated one by one from cellar to roof. The person who puts the house together knows it in its minutest details and has a far more accurate idea of its construction than the man who tears it down. This is true, first, because the process of construction lasts much longer than that of demolition: more time is spent on the study of the different parts. But besides this, the builder has a point of view different from that of the man who is destroying. The sensation of seeing a harmonious whole fall into meaningless bits has nothing in common with the alternating impulses of hope, surprise or satisfaction which come to a workman as he sees his edifice slowly assuming its destined form.

For these and still other reasons, the child, when interested in words at a certain age, can utilize grammar to good purpose, dwelling analytically upon the various parts of speech according as the processes of his inner spiritual growth determine. In this way he comes to own his language perfectly, and to acquire some appreciation of its qualities and power.

Our grammar is not a book. The nouns (names), which the child was to place on the objects they referred to as soon as he understood their meaning, were written on cards. Similarly the words, belonging to all the other parts of speech, are written on cards. These cards are all[11] of the same dimensions: oblongs (5 × 3-1/2 cmm.) of different colors: black for the noun; tan for the article; brown for the adjective; red for the verb; pink for the adverb; violet for the preposition; yellow for the conjunction; blue for the interjection.

These cards go in special boxes, eight in number. The first box has two compartments simply; the second, however, three; the third, four; and so on down to the eighth, which is divided into nine. One wall in each section is somewhat higher than the others. This is to provide space for a card with a title describing the contents of the section. It bears, that is, the name of the relative part of speech. The title-card, furthermore, is of the same color as that used for the part of speech to which it refers. The teacher is expected to arrange these boxes so as to provide for the study of two or more parts of speech. However, our experiments have enabled us to make the exercises very specific in character; so that the teacher has at her disposal not only a thoroughly prepared material but also something to facilitate her work and to check up the accuracy of it.

[12]

II

When a little child begins to read he shows a keen desire to learn words, words, words! Indeed in the "Children's House" we had that impressive phenomenon of the children's tireless reading of the little slips of paper upon which were written the names of objects.

The child must acquire his word-store for himself. The peculiar characteristic of the child's vocabulary is its meagerness. But he is nearing the age when he will need to express his thoughts and he must now acquire the material necessary for that time. Many people must have noticed the intense attention given by children to the conversation of grown-ups when they cannot possibly be understanding a word of what they hear. They are trying to get hold of words, and they often demonstrate this fact by repeating joyously some word which they have been able to grasp. We should second this tendency in the child by giving him an abundant material and by organizing for him such exercises as his reactions clearly show us are suitable for him.

The material used in our system not only is very abundant, but it has been dictated to us by rigid experimentation on every detail. However, the same successive choices of material do not appear among the children as a whole. Indeed their individual differences begin to assert themselves progressively at this point in their education.[13] The exercises are easy for some children and very hard for others, nor is the order of selection the same among all the children. The teacher should know this material thoroughly. She should be able to recognize the favorable moment for presenting the material to the child. As a matter of fact, a little experience with the material is sufficient to show the teacher that the educational facts develop spontaneously and in such a way as to simplify the teacher's task in a most surprising manner.

Suffixes and Prefixes

Here we use charts with printed lists of words which may be hung on the wall. The children can look at them and also take them in their hands.

Note:—The rôle of augmentative and diminutive suffixes in English is vastly less important than in Italian. Here are a few specimens:

The child's exercise is as follows: he composes the first word in any line with the alphabet of a single color (e.g., black). Next underneath and using the alphabet of the same color, he repeats the letters in the second word which he sees also in the first. But just as soon as a letter changes he uses the alphabet of another color (e.g., red). In this way the root is always shown by one color, the suffixes by another; for example:—

[15]

For English:

Then the child chooses another word and repeats the same exercise. Often he finds for himself words not included in the list which is given him.

In the following chart the suffixes are constant while the root varies. Here the suffix changes the meaning of the word. From the original meaning is derived the word for a trade, a place of business, an action, a collective or an abstract idea. Naturally, the child does not realize all this at first but limits himself merely to building the words mechanically with the two alphabets. Later on, however, as grammar is developed, he may return to the reading of these charts, which are always at his disposal, and begin to realize the value of the differences.

[17]

The child's exercise with the two alphabets will be as follows:

For English:

For English:

[18]

The child's exercise with the two alphabets will be as follows:

For English:

For English:

The children read one word at a time and try to reproduce it from memory, distinguishing through the two alphabets the two words of which each one is composed:

For English:

In the following chart the words are grouped in families. This chart may be used by children who are already well advanced in the identification of the parts of speech. All the words are derived from some other more simple word which is a root and of which the other words, either by suffix or prefix, are made up. All these roots are primitive words which some day the child may look for in a group of derivatives; and when he finds them he[20] will realize that the primitive word is a noun, adjective, or a verb, as the case may be, that it is the word which contains the simplest idea, and so the derivatives may be nouns, adjectives, verbs or adverbs.

On these charts appear various word-families. The teacher is thus spared the trouble of looking them up. Furthermore the child will some day be able to use them by himself. The exercises based on these are still performed with two different alphabets of different color so that the child can tell at a glance which is the root word.

The child sees that the mother word is always the shortest. The root remains in one color.

[22]

III

[Note:—The English language presents a far simpler situation than the Italian as regards the agreement of article and adjectives. Gender itself being, in the case of English nouns, more a matter of logical theory than of word-ending, adjectival agreement in the formal sense in practically unknown to English grammar. Likewise the formation of the plural is much simpler in English than in Italian, where the singular and plural word-endings are closely associated with gender. It is a question, in fact, whether the whole subject of the gender of English nouns should not be taken up somewhat later in connection with the pronouns, where English shows three singular forms masculine, feminine, neuter (him, her, it) as against the Italian two, masculine and feminine (lo, la, plural li, le, etc.). Signora Montessori's discussion of the situation in Italian still remains instructive to the teacher of English as an illustration of method. We retain her text, accordingly, in its entirety.—Tr.]

As we have already said, the words chosen for grammatical study are all printed on small rectangular pieces of cardboard. The little cards are held together in packages by an elastic band and are kept in their respective boxes. The first box which we present has two compartments. In the holders at the back of each compartment are placed the cards which show the part of speech to be studied, in this case article and noun. The article cards are placed in the article compartment and the nouns in the noun compartment. When the children have finished[23] their exercise they replace the cards—the nouns in the place for the nouns and the articles in the place for the articles. If the words article and noun are not a sufficient guide for the child, the color at least will make the task easy. In fact the child will place the black cards for the noun in the compartment indicated by the black guide-card (marked noun); the tan cards for the article with the tan guide-card (marked article). This exercise recalls the child's experience with the alphabet boxes, where one copy of each letter is pasted to the bottom of the box as a guide for the child in replacing the other letters. The child begins to speak of the article-section, the noun-section, and the article-cards and noun-cards. In so doing he begins to distinguish between the parts of speech. The material must be prepared very accurately and in a definitely determined quantity. For the first exercise, the children are given boxes with the articles and nouns shuffled together in their respective compartments. But there must be just enough articles of each gender to go with the respective nouns. The child's task is to put the right article in front of the right noun—a long and patient research, which, however, is singularly fascinating to him.

We have prepared the following words. We should recall, however, that the cards are not found in the boxes in this order, but are mixed together—the articles shuffled in their box-section and the nouns in theirs.

(We suggest as a corresponding English exercise the introduction of the indefinite article. This substitution involves four processes against the eight of the Italian exercise. The use of an before a vowel is quite analogous to the problem of the Italian l' and gl'. However the theoretical distinction between the definite and indefinite article, as regards meaning, is reserved by Signora Montessori to a much later period, though the practical distinction appear in the earliest Lessons and Commands.—Tr.)

One of the first steps in grammar. The children are deeply interested in placing the correct articles and nouns together. (A Montessori School in Italy.)

The child tries to combine article and noun and puts them side by side on his little table. In this exercise he is[25] guided by sound just as he was in building words with the movable alphabet. There the child's first step was to find relationships between real objects and the linguistic sounds corresponding to them. Now he sees suddenly revealed to him hitherto unsuspected relationships between these sounds, these words. To have an empirical way of demonstrating and testing these relationships, to practise very thoroughly on two kinds of words, suddenly brought forth into systematic distinctness from the chaos of words in his mind, offers the child not only a necessary exercise but the sensation of relief which comes from satisfying an inner spiritual need. With the most intense attention he persists to the very end of the exercise and takes great pride in his success. The teacher as she passes may glance about to see if all the cards are properly placed, but the child, doubtless, will call her to admire or verify the work that he has done, before he begins to gather together, first, all the articles, then, all the nouns, to return them to their boxes.

Grammar Boxes. The one on the left is for articles and nouns only; the one on the right, for articles, nouns, and adjectives.

This is the first step; but he proceeds with increasing enthusiasm to set the words in his mind "in order," thereby enriching his vocabulary by placing new acquisitions in an already determined place. Thus he continues to construct, with respect to exterior objects, an inner spiritual system, which had already been begun by his sensory exercises.

Singular and Plural

The exercises on the number and gender of nouns are done without the help of the boxes. The child already knows that those words are articles and nouns, so we give him now small groups of forty cards (nouns and articles) held together by an elastic band. In each one, the group[26] (tied separately) of the ten singular nouns serves as the guide for the exercise. These nouns are arranged in a column on the table, one beneath the other, and the other cards, which are shuffled, must be placed around this first group in the right order. There are two more cards of different colors on which the words singular and plural respectively are written; and these are placed at the top of the respective columns. We have prepared four series of ten nouns in alphabetical order. In this way four children may do the exercise at the same time and by exchanging material they come in contact with a very considerable number of words.

This is the way the cards should finally be arranged in the four different exercises:

Like material has been prepared for the masculine and feminine forms: The masculine group is kept by itself, while the feminines are shuffled.

Finally there are three series of nouns in four forms: Singular and Plural, Masculine and Feminine. Each group has eighty cards counting both nouns and articles, and the ten singular masculines in the guiding group are kept together, apart from the others. The title cards (twelve in number) are singular and plural and for each of them is a card marked masculine and a card marked feminine. The following is the order of the material when properly arranged by the child:

Occasionally class exercises are used in our schools for the four forms of the Italian noun, masculine and feminine, singular and plural. They take the form almost of a game, which the children find amusing. A child for instance distributes around the class all the plural nouns. Then he reads aloud a noun in the singular. The child who holds the corresponding plural answers immediately. The same thing is next done for masculine and feminine, and, finally, for all four forms at once.

When these exercises have become familiar to the child, others somewhat more difficult may be presented. These new ones comprise: nouns which change form completely as they change gender and of which, so far, only the most familiar examples (babbo, "father," mamma, "mother," etc.) have been given (Series A); nouns in which the form is the same in the singular of both genders (Series B); those in which both genders have a common form in the singular and a common form in the plural (Series C); nouns which have only one form for both singular and plural (Series D); nouns where the same form appears in both genders but with a different meaning (Series E); finally, nouns which change gender as they pass from the singular to the plural (Series F).

[31]

[33]

The Singular and Plural in English

Translator's Note:—While the formation of the English plural does not present the complications of gender that appear in Italian, the phonetic adaptations required by the plural ending -s along with certain orthographical caprices and historical survivals of the language, result in a situation somewhat more complex than treated by Signora Montessori. In fact, her analysis of the Italian plural requires eight word-lists, while English requires at least fourteen, not including the question of foreign nouns. The special stress on the article is hardly necessary in English. An analogous treatment for English would be somewhat as follows:

[34]

All these groups of words in their order are reproduced in special booklets which the children may take home and read. In actual practise such books have proved both convenient and necessary. The children generally spend much time on them and delight in reading the words over and over in the order in which they themselves have discovered them in the card exercise. This recalls and fixes their own ideas, inducing a sort of inner maturation which is often followed by the spontaneous discovery of grammatical laws on the relations of nouns, or by a lively interest which throws the children into exclamations or laughter as they observe what great differences of meaning are sometimes caused by a very slight change in the word. At the same time these simple exercises, so fruitful in results, may be used for work at home and well meet the[38] demands for something to do with which children are continually assailing their parents. For homework we have prepared alphabets where the letters are printed in type-writing order. With them the child can compose words, or later, sentences, at the same time becoming familiar with the alphabet arrangement of standard typewriters.

[39]

IV

The first lessons in grammar which I gave to children go back fully sixteen years. I first attempted the education of defectives in the "Scuola Magistrale Ortofrenica" in Rome in the year 1899 following a course of lectures I had given to teachers in the normal school of our capital. In this experiment I went far enough with primary work to prepare some of the defective children for successful examinations in the public schools. A very brief and incomplete summary of my pedagogical studies delivered in the teacher's courses is given in the appendix to this volume.

The teaching of grammar was not at that time so complete as it has since been made in my work with normal children; even so it was a marked success. Grammar was actually lived by the children, who became deeply interested in it. Even those wretched children who came, like rubbish thrown out of the public schools, directly off the street or from the insane asylums, passed delightful half hours of joyous laughter over their exercises in grammar. Here are some excerpts from the old pamphlet of 1900 giving an idea of the didactic material which was then used and some notion of a lesson on nouns. "As each word is read or written for every object-lesson, for every action, printed cards are being assembled which will later be used to make clauses and sentences with words that[40] may be moved about just as the individual letters were moved about in making the words themselves. The simple clauses or sentences should refer to actions performed by the children. The first step should be to bring two or more words together: e.g., red-wool, sweet-candy, four-footed dog, etc. Then we may go on to the sentence itself: The wool is red; the soup is hot; the dog has four feet; Mary eats the candy, etc. The children first compose the sentences with their cards; then they copy them in their writing books. To facilitate the choice of the cards, they may be arranged in special boxes: for instance, one box may be labeled noun; or the boxes may be distinguished thus: food, clothing, animals, people, etc. There should be a box for adjectives with compartments for colors, shapes, qualities, etc. There should be another for particles, with compartments for articles, conjunctions, prepositions, etc. A box should be reserved for actions, with the label verbs above it, containing compartments for the infinitive, present, past and future. The children gradually learn by practise to take their cards from the boxes and put them back in their proper places. They soon learn to know their "word boxes" and they readily find the cards they want among the colors, shapes, qualities, etc., or among animals, foods, etc. Ultimately the teacher will find occasion to explain the meaning of the big words written at the top of the drawers, noun, adjective, verb, etc., and this will be the first step into the subject of grammar.

NOUNS

We may call persons and objects by their name, their noun. People answer if we call them, so do animals.[41] Inanimate objects, however, never answer, because they cannot; but if they could they would. For example, if I say Mary, Mary answers; if I say peas, the peas do not answer, because they cannot. You children do understand when I call an object and you bring it to me. I say, for example, book, beans, peas. If I don't tell you the name of the object, you don't understand what I am talking about; because every object has a different name. This name is the word that stands for the object. This name is a noun.

Whenever I mention a noun to you, you understand immediately the object which the noun represents: tree, chair, pen, book, lamb, etc. If I do not give this noun, you don't know what I am talking about; for, if I say simply bring me ... at once, I want it, you do not know what I want, unless I tell you the name of the object. Unless I give you the noun, you do not understand. Thus every object is represented by a word which is its name; and this name is a noun. To understand whether a word is a noun or not, you simply ask: Is it a thing? Would it answer if I spoke to it? or Could I carry it to the teacher? For instance, bread: yes, bread is an object; table: yes, it is an object; conductor: yes, the conductor would answer, if I were to speak to him.

Let us look through our cards now. I take several cards from different boxes and shuffle them. Here is the word sweet. Bring me sweet! Is there anything to answer when I call sweet? But you are bringing me a piece of candy! I didn't say candy: I said sweet. And now you have given me sugar! I said sweet! Sweet, you see, is not an object You cannot guess what I have in mind when I say sweet. If I say candy, sugar, then you understand what I want, what object I am thinking about, because[42] the words candy, sugar, stand for objects. Those words are nouns."[2]

This summary, however, fails to give a real idea of the success of these lessons. When I said with a tone of decision, as if I could not think of the necessary word, "Bring me—bring me—bring me—," the children would gather round me, looking fixedly at my lips, like so many little dogs, waiting for me to throw something for them to fetch. They were in fact ready to run and get what I wanted. But the word refused to come. "Bring me—, bring me—." Finally in great impatience I cried, "But bring it to me quick—I want it." Then their faces lit up and they would laughingly cry, "But bring you what? What is it you want? What shall we bring you?"

This was the real lesson on the noun, and when, after great difficulty, the word "sweet" came out, the children would run and bring me every possible object that was sweet. I would refuse each one in turn. "No, I didn't ask for candy! No, I didn't ask for sugar!" The children would look at the object they had in their hands, half laughing, half puzzled and beginning to realize that sweet was not a name, that it was not a noun. These first lessons, which seemed something like commands that needed the help of the children to express themselves, brought the children to understand some part of speech, while evoking, at the same time, vivid and interesting scenes. They furnished the original impulse to the development we have reached to-day in our lessons on grammar. For such lessons we have adopted the term "commands." But with normal children these "commands" were gradually multiplied and evolved. They are no longer entrusted to the[43] teacher's ingenuity; nor are they dependent solely upon her dramatic sense—something essential if she is to stimulate the weak nervous reactions of little defectives and so gain and hold their attention. The "commands" to-day are written and may be read. They are combined with the card-exercises where the cards are read in silence and interpreted through actions—a method which grew spontaneously and with such great success from the work in the "Children's House." That is why, to-day, we speak in the elementary courses of "reading commands" or even of "writing commands."

The study of grammar has finally been arranged in a methodical series of exercises and the material has been prepared after careful and rigid experiment. Those who read this method will get a clear idea of the teacher's task. She has a material ready for use. She need not bother to compose a single sentence nor to consult a single program. The objects at her disposal contain all that is necessary. She need know simply what they are and how they are to be used. The lessons which she must give are so simple, and require so few words, that they become lessons rather of gesture and action than of words. It must be borne in mind, further, that the work is not as uninteresting as would appear from this arid summary. The actual school is a real intellectual laboratory, where the children work all the time and by themselves. After the material has been presented to them, they recognize it and like to hunt for it. They know how to find for themselves the precious objects which they want to use. They often exchange materials and even lessons with other children. The few lessons the teacher gives connect, as it were, a system of live wires, which set in motion activities quite disproportionate to the energy expended in the simple[44] act she performs. She pushes, so to speak, a button and here a bell rings, there a light goes on, there a machine begins to buzz. Very often the teacher sees a whole week go by without any need of intervention on her part.

And yet what delicacy and tact are necessary properly to "offer" this material, to give in an interesting way a lesson calculated to exert a direct action upon the child's spiritual activity! How skilful we must be to leave all the child's spontaneous impulses free to develop themselves, to keep careful watch over so many different individual impulses! This we must do if we are to "keep the lamp burning"! When, for example, on passing a table where the child has analyzed a sentence with the colored cards, the teacher shifts about, as if in play, one of the little slips, not only must she be possessed of the psychological insight necessary for intervening in this child's work at the proper time, but she must also have in mind the grammatical rule of which she wishes to give the child his first intuition. It follows that every single act of the teacher, however insignificant apparently, is, like the acts of the priest in the service, of the greatest importance, and should come from a consciousness thoroughly awake, and full of potentiality. Instead of giving out what she has in herself, the teacher must bring out the full possibilities of the children.

The teacher's extrinsic preparation is a matter of thorough acquaintance with the material. It should be so much a part of her that she knows at once what is needed for each individual case as soon as it arises. Actual practise soon develops this skill.

The exercises are performed with these little packages of specially prepared cards. The most important problem (for Italian grammar) is in the agreements; the agreement[45] of article and noun, as we have already shown, the agreement of noun and adjective, and later on of pronoun and verb, and pronoun and noun. There are two kinds of exercises, which we have termed respectively "analyses" and "commands."

The commands involve both work done by the teacher and exercises performed by the children. The purpose here is to clarify the meanings of words and often to suggest a practical interpretation of them. This explanation is followed by an exercise of the children themselves, who in turn practically interpret the meaning of one or more sentences written on a card which they read just as they did in the first exercises of reading in the "Children's House." On this card are the words which the teacher has just explained. In our experiments we gave these lessons immediately after "silence" just as we did for reading in the "Children's House." All the children, however, do not necessarily take part in these executions—oftenest it is only a group of children, sometimes one child alone, again, at other times, almost all of them. If possible the commands are given in another room, while the other children continue their work in the large hall. If this is not possible it takes place in the same room. These commands might be called "an introduction to dramatic art," for right there little dramatic scenes full of vivacity and interest are "acted out." The children are singularly delighted in working for the one exact "interpretation" which a given word requires.

The analyses, on the other hand, are of quite different character. "Analysis" is done at the table. It is work which requires quiet and concentration. While the command gives the intuition, the analysis provides for the maturation of the idea. The grammar boxes are used in[46] these exercises. In a larger compartment which each box contains, are placed several slips bearing a printed sentence; for example, Throw down your handkerchief. The child draws a slip and places it to one side on the table. Then he takes from the different boxes the colored slips corresponding to the different words in the sentence and places them side by side one after the other. In this way he composes the entire sentence: Throw down your handkerchief. The child is actually doing here a very simple thing: he is merely translating into colored cards the sentence which is printed on his slip. He composes this sentence in the same way in which he has already composed words with the moveable alphabet. But here the exercise is even more simple because the child need not remember the sentence, for it is there right before his eyes. His attention must be concentrated on other facts, so that all intellectual effort in the composition of the sentence itself is eliminated. The child has to note the colors and the position of the cards in the different boxes, since he must take the cards now from the noun box, now from the adverb box, now from that of the preposition, etc.; and the colors together with the position (each section has a title, as we have already seen) strengthen his consciousness of a classification of words according to grammar.

But what really makes this exercise in analysis so interesting is the teacher's repeated permutation of the different cards. As she goes by a table she changes, as though in fun, the position of a card, and in this way provokes the intuition of grammatical rules and definitions. Indeed, when she takes out the card, which refers to some new part of the exercise, the remaining sentence with its changed meaning emphasizes the function of the part of speech which has been moved. The effect shows[47] a distant analogy to the light that pathology and vivisection throw on physiology. An organ which fails in its function illustrates exactly that function, for never does one realize the precise use of an organ more clearly than when it has lost its power of functioning. Furthermore the removal of the words demonstrates that the meaning of the sentence is not given by the word alone but by the order of the word in the sentence, and this makes a great impression on the child. He sees the same cards first in a chaotic mass and then in an orderly arrangement. What was first a collection of meaningless words has suddenly become the expression of a thought.

From now on the child begins to experience a keen interest in the order of words. The meaning, the only thing the child is after, is no longer hidden in confusion. He begins to enjoy subtle permutations, changes which, without destroying the expression of a thought, obscure its clarity, complicate it, or make it "sound wrong." It is here that the teacher must have at her fingertips the rules governing the position of the various parts of speech. This will give her the necessary "lightness of touch," perhaps even the opportunity of making some brilliant little explanation, some casual observation, which may suddenly develop in the child a profound "grammatical insight." When the child has understood this he will become a deep "strategist" in mobilizing, disposing and moving about these cards which express thought; and if he really succeeds in mastering this secret, he will not be easily satiated with so fascinating an exercise. No one but a child would ever have the patience to study grammar so profoundly and at such length. This subtle work is, after all, not so easy for the teacher. That is why the material must be such as to suggest each step in detail. The[48] teacher should be relieved as much as possible of the labor of preparation and research: for her delicate work of intervention is a task hard enough in itself. In preparing this material we have worked for her: we have acted as the workmen who produce the various objects necessary to life; she has but to "live" and "make live." This will show still more clearly how far from truth is the modern conception of pedagogy which attempts to realize its desire for freedom in the school by saying to the teacher, "Try to respond to the needs of the pupils without being conscious of your authority over them." When we ask a teacher to respond to the needs of the inner life of man, we are asking a great deal of her. She will never be able to accomplish it, unless we have first done something for her by giving her all that is necessary to that end. Here is our material:—

Commands on Nouns

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These commands lend themselves to a little dramatic scene. It is really a sort of play, which the children recite.

The tendency to recitation and to imitation is very strong and often well developed at the age of five years. Little children experience a singular fascination in pronouncing the words with sentiment and in accompanying them with gestures. One can hardly imagine the simplicity of the little dramatic acts which interest the five year old child. Nothing but actual experiment could possibly have revealed it to us. One day, in fact, our little children were invited to be present at a dramatic entertainment given by the older children of the Public Schools. They followed it with really surprising interest. However, they remembered only three words of the play they had heard; but with these three words they made up a little dramatic action of their own, which they repeated over and over again the following day.

The commands of these "call" cards are, accordingly, real plays for our little ones. The child calls, pronouncing the name with a sort of sustained drawl; the child who is called comes forward; then the same thing is done with the other names, and each child obeys as he is called. Then the incomplete calls begin: blonde! blonde! beautiful! And no one moves! This makes a great impression on the children. Imperative commands, like requests, lend themselves to active dramatic action. Peter has been called and has brought his chair; George has brought the cube; Louis has taken out a frame; but Charles sits there intent, expectant, while the child calls out,—But bring it to me, bring it to me quickly! And how expressive we found the vain request,—Come, come! please give me a kiss,—come, come! At last the cry,—Mary![50] come! brings the resulting action and Mary runs to give the kiss which has been so long invoked!

These little "plays" require a real study of the parts, and the children rehearse their different rôles over and over again.

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V

Analyses

The material for word analysis consists of small cards for articles (tan), nouns (black) and adjectives (brown). There is one box with three compartments, each section marked with a card bearing the respective title: article, noun, adjective. At the front of the box is a space for other cards containing printed sentences to be analyzed.

Descriptive Adjectives

The child is to read the sentences, find the objects described in them, and finally build the sentences with his cards as follows: suppose the card reads:

The child finds the three colored tablets used in the familiar exercise of the "Children's House" for the education of the sense of color. He places these tablets on his table. Then he builds the phrases out of his word cards:

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Beside the completed expression he places the green color-tablet. Passing to the next phrase, he does not disturb the words the and color. He removes only the word green and substitutes for it the adjective blue, at the same time removing the green tablet and substituting for it the blue. Similarly, for the third phrase, he changes the adjective, putting the red tablet at the end. Thus the three different objects were distinguished only by the adjective:

All the phrases and sentences refer to objects used in the previous educational material. Occasionally the teacher will have to prepare something herself (e.g., hot, cold, warm, or iced water; clear water; colored water). For this exercise on water, the box contains six slips with the six printed phrases. In the box-sections, the child finds the corresponding word-cards which are exactly in the number needed for the exercise (not corresponding, that is, to the number of words in the phrases, since the articles and nouns are not repeated). There are five groups of such exercises, dealing with various kinds of sensation.

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The teacher who is observing notices whether the child has taken the right objects; if so, she proceeds to the permutations.

Permutations

At this point, the teacher should recall (in dealing with Italian) the grammatical rules for the position of adjectives, some of which (the fundamental ones) will certainly be very useful to her in executing these first permutations:—

I. In general, the adjective follows the noun. If placed before the noun, it is less conspicuous; if placed after, it assumes more importance and has a different force.

II. When the adjective is used to signify the exclusive superlative of a quality, it is not only placed after the noun, but is preceded by the article. (Umberto il buono, "Humbert the Good.")

Example:—The child has composed the following phrase with his cards: il triangolo rettangolo "the right-angled triangle." The teacher can interchange the words thus: il rettangolo triangolo, "the triangle right-angled." Similarly also, for other phrases:—

Both the meaning and the child's habits show him the normal position of the adjective. In some phrases, such as,

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the placing of the adjective before the noun renders the meaning vague, figurative, emotional, or generic, whereas it would be clearly descriptive and precise were the adjective in its normal position:

(In English the normal position of the adjective is before the noun. The permutation develops a strong rhetorical flavor, of which the child will become conscious later in his studies on poetic inversions.—Tr.)

After the teacher has made these changes, if they have interested the child, she may say for example: "The adjective comes after its noun" (for Italian); "The adjective comes before its noun" (for English). In this way she will have given a lesson in theoretical grammar.

Inflection of Adjectives

Another exercise to be done at the table deals with the formation of the singular and plural of adjectives in the two genders. This exercise brings the child in contact with a great many adjectives of quality. Two series, one of twenty masculine, the other of twenty feminine adjectives (in the two numbers) and two other series, twenty singulars and twenty plurals (in the two genders), form four groups of cards, one-half of which (tied separately) serves to direct the placing of the other half. Here are the words in their groups:

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Here, just as with the four noun forms (masculine, feminine, singular and plural), class games may be found useful. The plural forms may be dealt out to the class, while one child reads aloud the singulars, one after the other. The child, who, in a given case, has the proper plural, reads his card in answer. Similarly, for masculine and feminine.

Logical and Grammatical Agreement of Nouns and Adjectives

Another table exercise consists in arranging two groups of fifty cards, of which twenty-five are nouns (constituting the directing group), while the other twenty-five are adjectives. The nouns are put in a row and the child looks among the adjectives (which have been thoroughly shuffled) for those which are best suited to the different nouns. As he finds them he places them by the nouns with which they belong. Sometimes the nouns and adjectives placed together cause a great deal of merriment by the amusing contrasts that arise. The children try to put as many adjectives as possible with the same noun and develop in this way the most interesting combinations. Here are two groups which come prepared with the material:

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For a class game with these lists, the nouns may be placed on one table and the adjectives on another. Moving as during the "silence" lesson, each child selects first a noun, and then an adjective. When the selections have all been made, the pairs are read one after the other amid general enthusiasm.

Descriptive Adjectives

The study of the adjective may furnish occasion for giving the child a knowledge of physical properties (of substances) so far unknown to him. For example, the teacher may present a piece of transparent glass; a piece of black glass (or any opaque screen); a sheet of white paper with an oil stain. The child will see that through the transparent glass objects may be seen distinctly; that through the oil stain only the light is visible; that nothing at all can be seen through the opaque screen. Or she may take a small glass funnel and put into it a piece of filter paper, then a sponge, then a piece of waterproof cloth. The child observes that the water passes through the filter paper, that the sponge absorbs water, and that the water clings to the surface of the waterproof. Or take two glass graduators and fill them with water to different heights. In the case of the graduator filled to the very top, the surface of the water is convex; in the other, it is concave.

The commands are printed on little slips of paper which[62] are folded and all held together by an elastic band with a series of brown cards containing the adjectives used in the commands. Here is the material prepared:

—Fill one graduator with water to the point of over-flowing, and another not so full. Notice the form assumed by the surface of the water in each case and apply the proper adjective: convex, concave.

—Take various objects such as filter paper, cloth, a sponge, and see whether water can pass through them, applying the adjectives: permeable, impermeable, porous.

—Take a piece of clear glass, a sheet of black paper, a sheet of oiled paper; look at the light through them, applying the adjectives: transparent, opaque, translucent.

Object lessens demonstrating comparative weights may also be given by putting successively into a glass of water, oil, alcohol colored with aniline, a piece of cork, a little leaden ball (to be dropped). Then the command would be:

—Compare the weights of water and of colored alcohol; water and oil; water and cork; and water and lead. Then tell which is heavier and which is lighter than the other.

As an answer the child should give a little written exercise something like the following: Water is heavier than oil, etc. The children actually perform these little experiments, learning to handle graduators, funnels, filters, etc., and to pour the last drops of water very carefully so as to obtain the concave and convex surfaces. They acquire a very delicate touch in pouring the colored alcohol and oil on the water. Thus they take the first step into the field of practical science.

To continue the study of adjectives of quality, there is a series of commands relating to the comparative and superlative. An example of the comparative crept into these[63] experiments on weight. Here are additional commands where the little slip and the brown cards are kept together.

—Take the blue stairs or any other objects and put with each object the proper adjectives from the following list: thick, thin, thickest (Ital. grossissimo), thinnest (Ital. finissimo).

—Take the eight tablets of the color you like best, arrange them according to shades and apply the proper adjectives of quality from the following: light, lightest, dark, darkest.

—Take the series of circles in the plane insets, and pick out the circles which correspond to these adjectives: large, small, intermediate.

—Take the cloths or other objects adapted to these adjectives: smooth, smoothest, rough, roughest, soft, softest.

—Take the cubes of the pink tower or any other objects adapted to these adjectives: large, largest, small, smallest.

—Grade a number of objects according to weight so as to fit these adjectives to them: heavy, heaviest, light, lightest.

Adjectives of Quantity

Just as above, the slip is tied with the series of brown cards by an elastic band. Thus a group is formed. In our material the following three groups are available:

—Take the counters and make little piles which correspond in quantity to these adjectives: one, two, three, four, five, six, etc.

—Take the beads and make little piles of them to fit these adjectives: few, none, many, some.

—Decide first of all on some definite number of beads (two) and then make other little piles to fit these adjectives: double, triple, quadruple, quintuple, sextuple, tenfold, half, equal.

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Ordinals

—Build the blue stair and on each step place the proper adjective from the following: first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth.

—Place the following adjectives on the different drawers of the cabinet, beginning with the top drawer: first, second, third, fourth, fifth.

—Differentiate between the drawers of the cabinet by the following adjectives, beginning with the lowest: first, second, third, fourth, fifth.

Demonstrative Adjectives

As occasion may offer, the teacher may assemble a group of children and give them a few simple explanations on the meaning of certain words: questo, "this" (near us); cotesto, "that" (near you); quello, "that" (over there away from both of us). (Note: English lacks the demonstrative of the second person.)

Then she can distribute these commands which require collective actions of the class:—

—Gather in that (codesto) corner of the room near you; then all of you come over to this (questo) corner near me; then all of you run over to that (quello) corner over there.

—Choose one of your school-mates and tell him to put a box on this (questo) table; a small plate on that (quello) table over there.

—Tell one of your companions, pointing at the place, to put a green bead in this (questo) vase; a blue one in that (codesto) vase; a white one in that (quello) vase over there.

Arrange the children in groups in three different places in the room, and then give this command:

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—Let that (quello) group over there take the place of this (questo) group. Let that (codesto) group break up, the children going back to their tables.

Possessive Adjectives

In like manner the teacher explains the meaning of the words my, your, his, her, etc. She may do this with a simple gesture. Here are the commands:

—Point out various objects saying: This is my slate; that is your slate; that (over there) is her slate.

—Point at the different seats, saying: That (over there) is his place, that is your place, and this is my place.

—Pass around the little baskets, saying: This is my basket. Whose is that other basket? Is it your basket? And this one? Ah, this one is his basket.

—Let us take a turn around the room and then return to our seats. You go to your seat and they will go to their seats. Then we will divide up our things. Let us put our things here and their things there. We will go to your seats and you go to their seats. Meanwhile they will get up and then come over here to take our places.

[Signora Montessori does not differentiate between the possessive adjective and the possessive pronoun; perhaps because there is in Italian no characteristic pronominal form. Strictly speaking the Italian predicate form mio (e.g., Questo libra è mio) is adjectival, while the form il mio (i.e., with the definite article) is pronominal (e.g., Questo è il mio). English has, however, the pronominal possessives: mine, yours (thine), his, hers, ours, yours, theirs, used also as predicate adjectives. The above exercise should therefore he repeated later under the subject of pronouns in a slightly different form.—Tr.]

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VI

When I gave the first grammar lessons to defective children I put special emphasis on nouns and verbs. The noun (= object), and the verb (= action) were distinguished with the greatest clearness, much as we distinguish matter from energy, chemistry from physics. Condition and motion, as potential and kinetic energy, are both expressed by verbs. Whereas formerly the child took the objects in his hands and studied their name and attributes, here he must perform actions. In the execution of actions he must necessarily receive some help, for he is not always capable of interpreting the word with the precise action which corresponds to it. On the contrary, the study of the verb is necessary to initiate him into a series of "object lessons" upon the different actions he must perform. The teacher therefore must give individual lessons teaching the child to interpret the verb.

Analyses

In the usual manner we present a box which has four compartments, for the article, the noun, the adjective, and the verb. The sections are designated by the usual title cards: tan, black, brown, and red. In the compartment at the back of the box there are six slips for each exercise, and for every written word there is a card, except for such words as are repeated in successive sentences.[67] For example: if the following sentences are written on the cards:

And so the child after he has composed his first sentence needs to change only one card (lock for close) for the second sentence. This brings out the force of the verb, showing that one sentence may be changed into another by indicating an entirely different action. The child performs the action and then on his table he builds the sentences with the cards. In the series we have prepared, the verbs are either synonyms or antonyms. Here is the material:

Permutations

The teacher should have in mind the grammatical rules for the position of the verb in the sentence, to give the child a clear idea of its normal location before the direct object: "first the verb, then the object upon which it acts."

Example:

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Lessons and Commands on the Verb

The children take considerable delight in our verb lessons which develop through interpretations of actions. We use packs of red cards, tied with an elastic, each pack containing ten cards. The child executes the actions indicated on each card, one after the other. He may afterward copy the cards—an exercise specially attractive to very young children.

Examples:

—walk, sing, jump, dance, bow, sit, sleep, wake, pray, sigh.

—write, erase, weep, laugh, hide, draw, read, speak, listen, run.

—arrange, clean, dust, sweep, button, lace, tie, hook, greet, brush.

—comb, wash, wipe, embrace, kiss, smile, yawn, scowl, stare, breathe.

These are fairly common words, representing actions more or less familiar to the pupils. But this exercise is only an introduction to the real verb-lessons. For these the teacher selects, as subject for a lesson, a series of synonymous verbs. Their shades of meaning are taught[70] to the children by translating them into action, the teacher executing the action herself. She then distributes around the class commands making use of the verbs in question. There may be several copies of a given command if the pupils are very numerous. The child reads by himself the card he has received, executing the action from memory of what he has seen the teacher do. We have tested experimentally the Italian material (i.e., the verbs in parentheses), as follows:

lay, throw, toss, hurl (posare, gettare, lanciare, scagliare).

—Take a counter and lay it on the floor. Pick it up again and throw it on the floor.

—Roll your handkerchief into a ball. Toss it into the air. Pick it up again and hurl it against the wall.

—Lay your handkerchief carefully, very carefully, on the floor. Pick it up again and throw it on the floor. Make a ball of it and hurl it across the room. Pick it up and toss it into the air.

lie, crouch, sit, rise (sollevare, alzare, levare).

—Go to the sofa and lie with your face to the wall. Now rise, go to your table and sit with head erect.

—Rise from your chair and crouch behind the table, as though you were playing hide-and-seek. Rise and go back to the sofa.

open, close, lock, unlock (aprire, spalancare, chiudere, socchiudere, serrare, disserrare).

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—Go to a window and open it a little; wait a moment and then close it again. Open the window as wide as you can and close it immediately.

—Go to the door and open it wide. Then close the door gently. If the key is in the key-hole lock the door; but before you go away, unlock it again, so that everything is left just as you found it.

breathe, inhale, exhale (respirare, sospirare, inspirare, espirare).

—Go to the window, open it, and inhale and exhale the fresh air five times. Then after a moment inhale once and hold your breath as long as you can. When you can hold your breath no longer, exhale as slowly as you can.

—Take a hand mirror and breathe upon the glass. What happens?

hang, attach (appendere, affiggere, sospendere).

—Hang one of your best drawings on a hook in the room.

—Attach the drawing you like best with two pins to the wall near the door.

cover, wrap, tie, undo (avvolgere, involgere, svolgere).

—Take a book, a string and a large piece of cloth. Lay the book on your table and cover it with the cloth.

—Take the cloth and wrap it around the book so that the book cannot be seen.

—Tie a string around the cloth so that the book will not fall out.

—Undo the bundle, and return each object to the place where you found it.

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turn, invert, revolve, whirl, reverse (volgere, capovolgere, rovesciare).

—Turn a picture toward one of your school-mates so that he can see it clearly.

—Invert the picture, so that it will be upside down.

—Reverse the picture so that the back only can be seen by your school-mate.

—Revolve the seat of the piano-stool as rapidly as you can.

—Stand with your back to the window and turn slowly on your heel till you face the window. Whirl on your heel completely around till you again face the window.

breathe, blow, puff, pant (sbuffare, soffiare, alitare).

—Tear a large piece of paper into tiny bits on your table. Blow steadily upon the table till the pieces of paper are all on the floor.

—Pick up the pieces of paper and place them on the table. Puff three times upon them and see if they all fall to the floor. Gather up the pieces and throw them into the waste-basket.

—Breathe softly upon the back of your hand. What do you feel?

—Blow upon the back of your hand. What do you feel?

—Puff upon the back of your band. What do you feel?

—Pant noisily as though you had been running a long way.

murmur, mutter, whisper, speak, grumble (mormorare, sussurrare, brontolare).

—Ask one of your school-mates to listen carefully to what you say; then murmur a short sentence as though you were speaking to yourself.

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—Mutter the same words in a louder voice and see whether he understands.

—Whisper the same words in the ear of one of two children. Then ask the other whether he has heard.

—Grumble the same words and watch how the two children look at you.

—Speak the same words aloud and as distinctly as you can. Do the children understand?

touch, rub, graze (toccare, tastare, palpare, sfiorare).

—Go to your table and with your eyes shut touch it as though to recognize it.

—Rub the table with the tips of your fingers, bearing down as hard as you can. What do you feel?

—Graze the table with the tips of your fingers, trying not to touch it.

spread, sprinkle, collect, scatter (spargere, spruzzare, aspergere).

—Take a box full of beads and spread them evenly around the center of your table. Then collect them in a pile in the center of the table.

—Take a handful of the beads and scatter them over the table. Return all the beads to the box.

—Take a glass of water and sprinkle two or three handfuls on a plant in the room.

walk, stagger, march (barcollare, dondolare, erigersi).

—Walk naturally to the end of the room farthest from your table.

—March back to your seat as though you were keeping time to music.

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—Stagger across the room as though you were very dizzy.

take, seize, catch (acchiappare, acciuffare, afferrare).

—Walk to the cabinet and take a box of counters in your hands.

—Run to the sofa, seize the sofa-pillow, and run around the room with it, holding it in your arms.

—Roll your handkerchief into a ball, toss it into the air and try to catch it before it falls to the floor.

Lessons with Experiments

The function of the verb can be still more interestingly emphasized by suggesting actions designed to increase the child's knowledge in the direction of elementary science. Here the teacher, instead of executing simple movements, performs experiments, which on the same day or on succeeding days the child can imitate guided by the directions in the commands.

stir, mix, beat, flavor (mescolare, emulsionare, stemperare).

—Take a bowl half full of water and drop into it a half cup of flour; stir with a spoon until the mixture is thick.

—Place a table-spoonful of vinegar and a table-spoonful of olive-oil in a clean bowl; beat them together until an emulsion is formed.

—Place a tea-spoonful of chocolate and a tea-spoonful of sugar in a cup and mix them thoroughly. What color was the chocolate? What color was the sugar? What color is the mixture?

—Take a little milk in a cup and taste of it; add a drop of vanilla extract. Then taste of the milk again. Do you taste the vanilla? In the same way flavor a glass of water[75] with the vanilla. Flavor another glass of water with vinegar.

dissolve, saturate, be in suspension (sciogliere, fare la sospensiona, saturare).

—Place a spoonful of sugar in a glass of warm water and dissolve the sugar by stirring with a spoon. Is the water still clear?

—Saturate the water with sugar by continuing to add sugar and stirring till you can see the sugar at the bottom of the glass. Allow the water to rest a moment. Is the water still clear?

—Mix a spoonful of starch in the water. The water becomes white, since the starch does not dissolve but remains in suspension in the water.

strain, filter (decantare, filtrare).

—Take the glass containing the water saturated with sugar and the one with the starch in suspension, and allow the starch and sugar to settle for some time, until the water is clear. Taste the water in each glass, and then strain each glass of water separately.

—Filter the water saturated with sugar and the water with the suspended starch. Then taste of each.

By the time all these commands have been executed, the child will have developed a keen desire to go on, becoming so interested in the meaning of verbs as not to require further commands to stimulate his study of these words. The most frequent question now is "How many verbs are there in the language?" "Are there more in other languages?" etc. To satisfy this new curiosity of the children we have dictionaries of synonyms and antonyms, and[76] word-charts. But meantime they have been building their own dictionaries. One by one they begin to own copy books (rubrics) with illuminated letters of the alphabet. Under the proper letter the child copies his words as fast as he learns them. We are still experimenting on the question of the exact amount of information that may successfully be offered to elementary school children of various ages and stages of development, with the word material required for the notions of natural history, physics and chemistry they may be expected to acquire. We can say, at this moment, simply that each experiment involves the use of a certain number of new words (nouns, adjectives and verbs), which are copied into the word-books (rubrics) as fast as they occur.

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VII

Analyses

Here also the first exercise is to compose sentences analyzed with the colored cards. This grammar box has five compartments, each with a small title card of the color corresponding to the different parts of speech, red for the verb, black for the noun, brown for the adjective, tan for the article and violet for the preposition. In the compartment at the rear of the box are six cards with printed sentences. The colored cards do not correspond exactly to the number of words used in the sentences because the words of one sentence which are repeated in the next are not duplicated in the cards. In this case it is the change in preposition only which alters the meaning of the sentence. Here are the series of sentences, some of which the teacher may have used already in previous lessons (commands).

SERIES A

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Grammar Boxes, showing respectively four and five parts of speech. (Note: The cards forming the sentence, "Place the blue cone against the pink cube," should have been arranged in one continuous line, not in two lines.)

SERIES B

SERIES C

[Note:—Such relationships are expressed in English preferably by adjectives: cloth of cotton = cotton cloth; or by the possessive inflection with -s: the drawing of George = George's drawing. In Italian they are expressed by the prepositions di, per, da, etc.: stoffa di cotone "cotton cloth," piattino di vetro "glass saucer." For Signora Montessori's simple exercise we suggest for English the following definitions (Tr.)].

Grammar Boxes, containing respectively six and seven parts of speech. (Note: In the sentence on the right, the cards should be in one line, not two.)

SERIES D

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[80]

Permutations

The child has built the first sentences on each of the slips with his cards, and he has reproduced the others by changing simply the preposition cards. In this way he has seen how the position of objects relative to each other is determined wholly and only by the use of the preposition. The preposition, therefore, determines the relation of words, the relation of a noun to some other word, here to another noun or to a verb. In the phrase,

Here are some examples of sentences in the above exercises from which the preposition has been taken away by the teacher:

To give the child an idea of the normal position of prepositions a series of permutations may be made leaving the preposition and its object in their normal positions. In this case some meaning is still left to the sentence:

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But the child will recognize that the right sentence is the simplest and the clearest:

On the other hand if we separate the preposition from its object or invert their normal position, the meaning is entirely lost:

And likewise with these other sentences:

Lessons and Commands on Prepositions

The teacher may also take groups of children and give them short lessons on the preposition to explain the meaning, selecting if possible two or three synonyms or antonyms each time. The lessons should always he practical and full of action. The child should come to understand in this case the relationship established by this or that preposition between the object (noun) and the action (verb) to be performed. As soon as this has been made clear by the teacher the commands are distributed to the children who put them into execution. Here is the material that we use:

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Of (di).

—Go and get a boxful of counters. Go and get a glass of water. Bring me a piece of cloth.

near (to), next (to), beside, far away from (vicino, accosto, lontano).

—One of you boys stand in the middle of the room. Now you others go and stand near him. One of you stand next to him on the right, another beside him on the left. Now all go far away from him.

in, into, inside, out of (in, dentro, fuori).

—Rise from your chairs and go into the next room. Stay in that room a moment and then come back into this one. Go back on tip-toe and lock yourselves inside the next room. Come out of the next room into this one.

On this side of, on that side of, beyond (di là da, di qua da, oltre).

—Leave your places and form a circle on that side of the door; form a circle then on this side of the door. All of you go and stand somewhere beyond the door.

except, save (tranne, eccetto).

—All the children, except George and Mary, walk on tip-toe around the room.

—All the children, save George and Mary, walk on tip-toe around the room.

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side by side with, opposite, in front of, along (di fianco, di fronte, avanti).

—Form a line side by side with each other.

—Form a line along the wall opposite the door.

—Form two lines in front of the piano.

before, behind (dirimpetto, dietro).

—Two of you come and stand before me.

—The rest of you go and stand behind me.

on, about, along (su, secondo, lungo).

—Each of you place one counter on the table. Now arrange the same counters along the far edge of the table. Now scatter the same counters about the center of the table.

between, among (fra, in mezzo a).

—One of you go and stand between the door and the piano.

—Place ten white counters on the table. Now go and scatter two or three red counters among the white ones.

from, to, as far as (da, a, fino a).

—Rise and walk from your places to the piano; wait a moment and then continue as far as the door of the next room.

around, about (attorno, intorno).

—Walk in couples, arm in arm, around the room twice; when[84] you reach the piano on the second round, form a circle about the piano.

toward, against (verso, contro).

—Take your chairs and move them three steps toward the wall in front of you. Next, arrange your chairs in a row with their backs against the wall behind you.

across, through (attraverso, per).

—Roll your handkerchiefs into balls and throw them across the room.

—Pick them up as they lie and try to throw them through the door into the hall.

With, without (con, senza).

—Walk around the room with your chairs in your hands.

—Walk around the room without your chairs.

to, in order to, so as to (per).

—Wash your hands in order not to soil the cloth. Then close your eyes and feel this cloth so as to recognize it.

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VIII

Analyses

Again the exercise consists of sentences analyzed by means of colored cards and commands. The grammar box contains six compartments having, like the others, the names of the different parts of speech on title cards of proper color. The card for the adverb is pink. In the rear compartment are six slips for each exercise, and in the sections the usual number of corresponding colored cards for the necessary words.

Group A

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Group B

Group C

Group D

Permutations

The sentences to be analyzed are reproduced as usual by building the first sentence on each slip; and then, by changing the adverb, the child gets the second or third sentence. One of the first permutations is to remove the adverb from those sentences where it performs the function of an adjective to the verb, thereby causing one action to be changed into another. For example take the two sentences:

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Written without the adverb they indicate one action. What slight changes in the position of the head can be brought about by these adverbs! It is the adverb which really shows fine differentiations in movement!

In other sentences also where the adverb is, so to speak, an adjective to an adjective and therefore really affects the object (noun), similar permutations may be made.

(Note: In English the position of the adverb is much freer than in Italian; it often stands at the end of the sentence and even between subject and verb,—something[89] quite foreign to normal Italian usage. We retain the text entire.)

In the sentences analyzed by the child it is sufficient to recall that the adverb modifies the verb and follows the verb it modifies. Take the sentence:

On the other hand, adverbs of quantity and comparison precede the adjective:

Permutation gives the following results:

Adverbs of time and place often ring like trumpet calls to attention at the beginning of the sentence:

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(Note: In English the adverb of time, placed at the end of the sentence, gains quite as much emphasis. So for adverbs of place.)

Lessons and Commands on Adverbs

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[92]

—One of you call the children to the end of the room, carefully observing how they walk; judge their carriage without speaking and distribute the following cards where they belong: well, badly, fairly, best, worst.

—One of you stand in the center of the room; the others gather round him. Suddenly all of you run away from him. Then come back to him again.

—Form in line and the first four children come to me here; the rest go and stand there by the window. Now go and stand somewhere in the other room. Remain where you are a moment, then go and stand elsewhere. Finally all come back here to me.

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A Burst of Activity:

In our own private experiments when we reached the adverb there occurred among the children a veritable explosion into a new kind of activity. They insisted on making up commands themselves. They invented them and then read them aloud to their companions or had their companions interpret the slips which they had written. All were most enthusiastic in performing these commands and they were rigorously scrupulous in acting them out down to the minutest detail. The executions came to be a literal, intensely real dramatisation: if a word was inexact or incorrect, the interpretation of the command threw the error into noisy relief, and the child who has written it saw before him an action quite different from what he had in mind. Then he realized that he had expressed his thought wrongly or inadequately and immediately set to work to correct his mistake. The revelation seemed to redouble his energy. He would hunt[94] among his numerous words for the one necessary to translate his idea into a living scene before his eyes. Suppose a child had written the following sentence involving the use of the adverb sempre "always":

meaning that the child should all the while go on tip-toe; if the child began to walk on tip-toe and continued to do so for a long time, trying to express sempre (always—forever) he would find himself facing a serious problem. Hence the spontaneous query: "What must I do to express myself correctly?"

A little girl once wrote "Walk around the tables," meaning that the children should form a line and walk in and out around each table. Instead she saw her companions form a line and walk round the entire group of tables. Red in the face and out of breath she kept calling: "Stop, stop. That isn't the way," just as if this difference between the thought she actually had in mind and the way it was being executed were hurting her intolerably.

This is only a passing suggestion of something which, I think, will merit much further development later on, after more thorough experiment. It will suffice, however, to bring to the teacher a notion of a most fertile field for the development of the written language in its most rigorous purity. It is evident that the experiment shows the possibility not only of having spontaneous compositions without grammatical errors (just as the mechanical writing was spontaneous and without errors), but of developing a love for clearness and purity of speech which will be a potent factor in improving the literary appreciation of the masses, and popular culture generally.

[95]

When the children are seized with this passion for accurate expression of their thoughts in writing, when, spontaneously, clearness becomes the goal of their efforts, they follow the hunt for words with the keenest enthusiasm. They feel that there are never too many words to build with exactness the delicate edifice of thought. Problems of language come to them as a revelation. "How many words are there?" they ask. "How many nouns, how many verbs, how many adjectives? Is there any way for us to learn them all?" They are no longer content with their little copy-books of words. They ask for a wealth of word material which they now enjoy with all the delight of attractive and orderly interpretation. They never get tired of it.

These developments in our work suggested to us the idea of giving the children a large vocabulary comprising a sufficient number of nouns, verbs, and adjectives and containing all the words of the other parts of speech. The difference in bulk between the real content of language (substance and modification, that is, nouns with their adjectives, and verbs with their adverbs) and the other words which serve to establish relations and consolidate this content, is something very impressive to children of eight. It is for them that we tried to prepare our word charts and the dictionaries of synonyms for nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Here, meanwhile, are some of the commands which the children wrote themselves—things which they improvised all of a sudden, by an explosion of energy, as it were, developed as the result of inner maturity. Compare the aridity and uniformity of the commands we invented ourselves with the variety and richness of ideas appearing in the children's commands! We very evidently show the weariness the preparation[96] of the material caused us. They, on the contrary, reveal an ardent, vivacious spirit, a life full of exuberance.

COMMANDS IMPROVISED BY THE CHILDREN

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IX

Material:—The box has seven compartments marked with the colored title slips; tan for the article, black for the noun, brown for the adjective, red for the verb, violet for the preposition, pink for the adverb, and green for the pronoun. In the rear space are the slips for the sentences to be analyzed. There are, as usual, fewer cards than words. The exercise is to substitute the pronouns for nouns.

(As already noted for the adjective English lacks the demonstrative of the second person: that near you.)

Note: The situation with the relatives is different in English: who refers to persons; which to things; that to either persons or things; whereas che and il quale are interchangeable referring to both[100] persons and things, il quale having special rhetorical advantages over che, in addition to showing gender and number. Cui is used after prepositions; and, for the possessive Italian has il cui, la cui, etc., "whose".

Permutations

The function of the pronoun as a substitute for a noun has been made clear in the analysis of the above sentences. After the children themselves have composed the first sentence with the colored cards they form the second sentence by taking away the noun card and substituting the corresponding pronoun. In the work done by the teacher to give the child an idea of the normal position of the pronoun, let her remember that in Italian personal pronouns precede the verb except in interrogation (where the subject may follow) and in cases where the subject is specially emphasized and where the pronouns appear as a suffix (infinitive, participle and imperative).

Lessons and Commands on the Pronoun

Explain these pronouns as briefly and practically as possible from the point of view of speaker and listener, etc., one child commanding the others while they execute the command along with him. Example: The teacher, named for instance Anna Fedeli, explains in this way: "I don't say Anna Fedeli; I say I." "To Carlino here I don't say Carlino; I say, you." "Of Gigino, over there, I don't say Gigino; I say he," etc., etc.

The command is given by a child; but he himself executes the first personal form along with the other children:

[103]

From these exercises the notion gradually develops that:

Other commands may be dramatized by small groups as follows:

—The first person must put a question the second must answer, and the third from a distance must try to hear both of them.

—Let the first one write, the second one watch, and the third one say "That is not right."

The following commands may be read aloud by the child:

—I ask you a question very softly. You answer me; and he, over there, must try to hear both of us.

—I shall write; you must act as if you were trying to read what I am writing; and then he, over there, will call out: "That is not right."

Direct Objective Personal Pronouns: me, you, him, her, us, you, them (mi, ti, si, lo, la, ci, vi, si, li, le).

Reflexives and reciprocals: myself, yourself, etc., each other.

(Here too one child commands executing the first personal forms, while the others act out the second and third):

—I touch the oil-cloth on the table; I touch myself; I touch you; you touch yourself; I touch him; you touch her; let us touch each other; you touch me.

—Charles, take the whisk-broom and brush the table; Charles, brush me; Charles, brush him; Charles, brush her; Charles, brush yourself.

—Mary and I bow to the teacher; now we bow to you; now we bow to him; now we bow to her; now we bow to each other.

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—I lead George by the hand to the window; I lead you by the hand to the window; I lead him by the hand to the window; he leads us by the hand to the window; we lead her by the hand to the window.

Indirect object personal pronouns: me, te, se, mi, ti, si, le, gli, lui, lei, noi, voi, ci, vi, loro (the disjunctive pronouns, used after prepositions, etc., do not differ in English from the simple direct object forms).

(The commands are still executed as above):

—I am going to distribute these pencils: one to you, one to him, one to her; one to myself.

—Louis, give me a command; give him a command; give her a command; give yourself a command.

—Attention! Charles, give her a blue bead! Mary, give him a red bead!

—Alfred, give a white bead to me; give me also a yellow bead!

Demonstratives for persons (questi, costui, colui; the second person, "that one near you," is lacking in English, which also fails to distinguish between persons and things and between genders).

When the distinctions in space represented by these pronouns have been taught as above the children read and execute as follows:

Distribute the pronouns to different children in the class; questi, "this one (near me)," costei (feminine); costui, "that one (near you)," costei (fem.); colui, "that one (over there)," colei (fem.); when the children are in their proper places, give to each child a different command.

—Call to you a boy and a girl, and then command: that one (costui) go and get a case; that one (costei) go and get a counter; those (costoro) keep far away and preserve complete silence.

[105]

—Point to two children, one standing near you and one far away; then command: that one (colui) go and fetch an armchair for that one (fem. costei) and a chair for this one (questo); then have him return to his place. Then have all the children execute the commands which those (costoro) will now give.

In case the class is made up entirely of girls or entirely of boys, the children find considerable amusement in trying to imitate the manners of whichever opposite sex is missing.

Demonstratives of things (questo, cotesto, quello, ciò, ne); here also English has no pronoun of the second person (that near you), nor does it possess the general indefinite ciò (referring to a general idea: that (ciò) is true).

When the meaning of these words, in terms of space location, has been taught, the children execute as follows:

—You children divide into three groups; then go and occupy three different places; change places as follows: you leave that (cotesto) and occupy that over there; the others leave that (quello) and occupy this (questo).

—Point out various objects, saying: This is my slate; that one is yours, that is hers, and this one is his.

—Point at the different seats, saying: Here are our places, that is mine and this is yours. Those over there are theirs.

—Pass around little baskets, saying: This is my basket. Whose is that? Is that yours? Is this hers? Are these ours? Is this one his?

We dealt with the relatives only incidentally in the analyses (Group C above); we do not treat them here,[106] postponing the study of them in detail to the chapter on sentence-analysis.

Paradyms

In teaching the declension of the pronouns we use the method employed by us in teaching all inflections: bundles of cards, of which one group is tied separately and serves as a guide. The child arranges the cards on the table, working first on the guiding group and putting the pronouns in order of persons: first, second, third.

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[108]

Agreement of Pronoun and Verb

The cards given to the child for this work are green for the personal pronoun subjects, and red for the verb forms of the three simple tenses, present, past, and future. There are, for Italian, three groups corresponding to the three conjugations: amare, temere, sentire. The child's work is to place the pronouns in the proper order of person (first, second, third, singular and plural) and to put after each pronoun the corresponding verb form. Each child corrects his work by his own sense of the language; however, the teacher looks it over to verify it. The resulting exercises when correctly performed are as follows:

[109]

FOR ENGLISH

[110]

The child can shuffle his cards in various ways, mixing the verb forms of the three different Italian verbs, or the four tense forms of the English verb; passing then to a reconstruction of the different tenses according to the pronouns, the order of which has by this time become familiar to him.

The next step is to conjugate properly.

Conjugations of Verbs

In our material we offer (for Italian) the conjugation of the two auxiliary verbs (essere "to be," avere "to have") and the model verbs of the first, second and third conjugations. The colors used for the five verbs are all different, yellow for essere "to be," black for avere "to have," pink for amare "to love," green for temere "to fear," light blue for sentire "to hear." Each card has both pronoun and verb form. This is not only to simplify and expedite the exercise but also to make sure of auto-exercise, since the pronoun guides the order of the forms in each tense. These verb forms of a given verb preceded by the pronouns are, accordingly, made into a little package. Here, however, the groups are not so simple as in other cases. For the verb, the cards are kept in a sort of red envelope tied with a ribbon. The infinitive of the verb is written on the outside of the envelope, which, though very simple, is most attractive. When the whole verb is wrapped in its package and tied with the ribbon, it forms a small red prism of the following dimensions: cmm. 35 X 4 X 5.5. On untying the ribbon and opening the envelope the child finds inside ten little "volumes" with red covers. These volumes represent the[111] moods of the verb and they have the following titles inscribed on the first page:

To facilitate replacing these materials in an orderly way and to be sure that this order is recognized, the child finds in the corner of each envelope a Roman numeral (I, II, III, IV, V); and besides that, an Arabic numeral indicating the number of tenses in the given mood. On opening the little volume and taking off the cover we find many other tiny volumes with red covers. These are the tenses. In the middle of each cover is written the name and, to one side, the number indicating the relative position of the tenses in the following manner: the simple tense is marked with the letter S and the compound tense with the letter C. The titles, then, of the eight booklets contained in the little volume for a given mood are:

Finally, on opening each of these little booklets (which, by the way, are 3.5 X 4 cmm. and only a bare millimeter thick) we have the cards with the verb forms preceded by the corresponding pronoun.

[112]

This rather resembles the famous egg in which a number of smaller and smaller eggs were enclosed. For this beautiful package forming as a whole the entire conjugation of the verb contains the booklets of the different moods, which in their turn contain the smaller booklets of the tenses. The orderly enumeration of the moods and tenses, together with the pronouns which serve to show the order of the verb forms, allows the child to conjugate the entire verb by himself and to study the classification of the different forms that make it up. In fact the children need no help in this exercise. Once they have this attractive, complicated, and mysterious little red package, they evolve on their little tables in an orderly way the entire conjugation of the verb. Having learned the verb forms little by little they shuffle the cards of the different tenses in various ways and then try to put them in their regular order. At length they are able to shuffle all the cards in the entire verb as the children in the "Children's House" did with the sixty-four colors; and to reconstruct correctly the whole conjugation by tense and by mood. They themselves finally ask to write the verb and they prepare of their own accord new booklets writing out the new verbs as they meet them.

For this purpose we have included in our materials many booklets likewise covered in red and filled with blank cards of a variety of colors. The children themselves fill out these cards in conjugating their new verbs.

The exercises both of working out the conjugation of the verb and of writing out new verbs may be performed at home.

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X

Analyses

Material: This box has eight compartments for the title cards, which are tan (article), black (noun), brown (adjective), red (verb), violet (preposition), pink (adverb), green (pronoun), and yellow (conjunction). It also has the usual place for the sentences that are to be analyzed. These again are given in groups.

[114]

Grammar Boxes, showing respectively eight and nine parts of speech.

[115]

The children are permitted to work at their various occupations in complete freedom. (The Lenox School, Montessori Elementary Class, New York.)

Permutations

The removal of the conjunction destroys the relationship between the words, and this brings out its function in the sentence:

The conjunction must be placed between the words it connects: otherwise the meaning is changed or destroyed:

Lessons and Commands on the Conjunctions

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[117]

Comparison of Adjectives

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A set of exercises may be arranged to bring out the paradymns of comparison by means of suffixes (-er, -est) and of adverbs (more, most). Here the series of cards for the positive adjectival forms are, as usual, brown, the phonograms for -er and -est in lighter and darker shades of brown respectively. The cards for more and most as adverbs are colored pink. When properly arranged, the cards appear as follows:

A second exercise contains cards for each of the forms for these same words. There are three colors: brown, light brown and dark brown (superlative). There are in addition similar cards for the adjectives of irregular comparisons, and three title cards: Positive, Comparative, Superlative. The exercise results as follows:

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XI

Since this is the last part of speech to be studied the children are now able to recognize all the different parts of speech and it is no longer necessary to make sentences containing only parts of speech which the children know. Therefore in our Italian lessons we choose henceforth sentences from the classic authors (mostly from Manzoni). Since the interjection is really a thought expressed in an abbreviated form it lends itself readily to dramatic interpretation. With the same sentence the children accordingly can now perform the two-fold exercise of general analysis and "interpretative reading." They now recite sentences which they have picked out and studied instead of the commands. At this time also they are given a chart containing the complete classification of interjections. The children read them, interpreting each as they go along by voice and gesture. This is the first table of classification to be presented. Later on all the parts of speech will be given on charts with their definitions and classification.

Analyses

Material: The grammar box is complete. It now has nine separate compartments for the colored cards, article (tan), noun (black), adjective (brown), verb (red), preposition (violet), adverb (pink), pronoun (green), conjunction (yellow), and interjection (blue). In the compartment[121] for the sentence slips are groups of cards which correspond exactly to the number of the words contained in the sentences.

Please! Don't make so much noise!

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