[Gutenberg 58379] • Montessori children

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1915 edition. Excerpt: ... the great silence Montessori Development of Repose It was an amazing fact, but a significant one, that four-year-old Joanina had never been allowed to feel herself. As she lay in her carved-wood cradle, a bundle of cooing, pink delight, she felt for her toes, that she might assure herself of her own identity as represented in those wriggling lumps of flesh. But Joanina's mother bound the little limbs in swaddling bands and the bambino lost her toes temporarily. When she was a bit older, and was allowed to bask, kitten-like, on a rug in the garden path, she was charmed to hold her flowerlike baby hands up to the light, watching the Roman sunshine trickle through outstretched fingers as she tried to count them. But, always, her emotional, kindly intentioned madre would toss a bright-colored ball into the reaching hands or, bending over the baby, would play pat-a-cake with her, or she would suggest a romp up and down the garden. Her self-imposed quiet was always interrupted by her mother's unrest. As Joanina grew to a slim little girl of Italy, whose great, wistful brown eyes reflected a large curiosity and awe at the surprises of the world in which she found herself, she was daily surrounded by forces that drew her away from herself. Her home was full of glaring colored pictures hung on vividly dyed wall paper. Her mother and father talked together in high-pitched, shrill voices, and through the wide casement windows came the harsh sounds of traveling street musicians and brawling venders. Always, as a treat on Sunday or a festa, Joanina was taken to see a procession or to a band concert in one of the parks. The crowded, hot stone streets, the noisy cracking of the cab-drivers' whips, the struggle to make her own short legs keep up with...