Children's House of Weld County: Montessori
 (303) 651-3215
3801 Godding Hollow Parkway
Frederick, CO 80516
Maria Montessori, Italian physician, educator, philosopher, humanitarian and devout Catholic, is best known for her philosophy and the Montessori method of education of children from birth to adolescence. Her educational method is in use today in a number of public and private schools throughout the world.

Maria was born on August 31, 1870 to Italian parents Alessandro and Renilde. From a young age she was interested in learning and education, and at age 13, she attended an all-boys school on her way to fulfilling her dream of becoming an engineer. She was the first woman to graduate from the University of Rome La Sapienza Medical School, and become the first female doctor in Italy.

As a member of the University's Psychiatric Clinic, she became engrossed with educating mentally slow children in Rome. In 1896, she spoke at the Educational Congress in Torino about the training of the disabled. The Italian Minister of Education, who was in attendance, was impressed by her research and arguments, and appointed her as director of the Scuola Ortofrenica, an institution devoted to the care and education of the mentally retarded. Maria was pleased to be able to prove her theories in her new calling. Her first notable success was to have her eight-year-old students apply to take the state examinations for reading and writing. The children not only passed, but had above-average scores, an achievement described as "the first Montessori miracle." Montessori's response to their success was "if mentally disabled children could be brought to the level of normal children then (she) wanted to study the potential of 'normal' children."

From her success with these children, she was asked to set up a school for children in a housing project in Rome, which opened on January 6, 1907, and which she called "Casa dei Bambini" or Children's House. Children's House was centered in an apartment building in a very poor neighborhood of Rome. Maria focused on teaching her students how to develop their own skills at a pace they set, which was a principle Montessori called "spontaneous self-development." The success of this school sparked the opening of many more, and a worldwide interest in Montessori's methods of education.

Following the establishment of Montessori's first school, by 1917 there was an intense interest in her method in North America, which later waned. Nancy McCormick Rambusch later helped revive the method in the US by establishing the American Montessori Society in 1960. At nearly the same time, Margaret Stephenson came to the US from Europe and began a long history of training Montessori teachers as part of the Association Montessori Internationale (AMI).

Montessori was exiled by Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini (mostly) because she refused to compromise her principles and make the children into soldiers. She moved to Spain and lived there until 1936 when the Spanish Civil War broke out. She then moved to the Netherlands until 1939.

In 1939, the Theosophical Society of India invited Maria Montessori to visit India. She eagerly accepted and arrived in India the very same year accompanied by her only son, Mario Montessori Sr. This was the beginning of her special relationship with India. She made the international Headquarters of the Theosophical Society at Adyar, Chennai, her home. The war, however, forced her to extend her stay in India, and with the help of her son, Mario, she conducted sixteen batches of courses called the Indian Montessori Training Courses. These courses laid a strong foundation for the Montessori Movement in India. In 1949, when she was finally able to leave India for a return trip to the Netherlands, she appointed Albert Max Joosten as her personal representative, and assigned him the responsibility of conducting the Indian Montessori Training Courses. Joosten, along with Swamy S R, another disciple of Dr. Maria Montessori, continued Maria's work and ensured that the Montessori Movement in India was constantly progressing.

Maria lived out the remainder of her life in the Netherlands, which now hosts the headquarters of the AMI, or Association Montessori Internationale. She died in Noordwijk aan Zee on May 6, 1952. Her son headed the AMI until his death in 1982.
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We feel so fortunate to have found the Children's House. We have four children ages 9, 7, 5, and 3 and have had a child at Children's House continuously since 2002. We have always been impressed with the quality of care and education. Each teacher at the...[more]
Sam and Darby Moore
To aid life, leaving it free, however, that is the basic task of the educator.
~ Maria Montessori ~