All My Children

Protection is usually mentioned as the first purpose of clothes. Modesty is another, but there is little stress on it today. An aim with high priority throughout history has been to conceal or minimise the unattractive features of each person’s body and to call attention to the more appealing ones. When we want to please someone or a group we dress up; and when we don’t give a damn or want to show a subtle scorn, we dress too negligently for the occasion.

Human beings have a wavering attitude in regard to modesty and exhibitionism. (Exhibitionism is the pleasurable impulse to show one’s body—or one’s total self.) They start off in early childhood as frank exhibitionists; they’ll gleefully show their navels or their genitals to anyone who really appeals to them. But by six or seven, they are apt to be bashful about being seen naked or when using the bathroom, at least some of the time. In early adolescence, when a person is made strongly aware of his sexual interests but has not yet become sufficiently used to them to be comfortable with them, modesty tends to be even more accentuated. (A modest person may, at the same time, be having fantasies of exhibitionism.) Continue Reading »

The Globes

Start with the globes. There are two Montessori globes. The first is the land and water globe which has the continents covered with sandpaper and the sea painted blue, so that initially the child learns two things — the shape of the world, which is a sphere, and that it is made up of land and water. The second globe has the continents painted in different colours — Europe is red, Asia is yellow, Africa is green, Australasia is brown, North America is orange, South America is pink and Antarctica is white — and the child learns the names of the continents and oceans. (If your child goes to a Montessori school she will most likely be introduced to these globes there, but if she doesn’t you can still help her to learn the same ideas from an ordinary globe.)

Puzzle Map of the World

The Montessori world puzzle map is made up of two hemispheres, each with the continents removable as whole puzzle pieces. The colours are the same as those on the globe. It is easier for a young child to see how the world is represented on a flat map if she can take out the pieces and compare them with the same continents on the globe — the shape, colour and size will match. (This piece of apparatus can be easily made at home by tracing round the continents in an atlas, then cutting them out in coloured paper and sticking them on to cardboard.) Continue Reading »