Your child sees everything in your house. You have created a physical and emotional space for him to grow. Is everything in this space just as you want him to know it?

Your young child’s brain works as an Absorbent Mind, taking in everything in his environment.

This was one of Maria Montessori’s great discoveries in the early 20th century.

Your child takes in everything around him. All that he sees, hears, tastes, smells, and touches, instantaneously. He soaks up the full experience. In this way, he has no control over what he takes in, and he has an amazing capacity to store this information. Then he builds the connections in his brain from these experiences. These experiences become him; his will, his intellect, his personality!

Five ways to build a better brain:

1) Keep items that help him have purposeful activity and opportunity. Keep your home free of clutter and ‘noise’.
2) Offer the best to your child whenever possible, whether it be fresh peaches instead of canned ones, or grass for crawling instead of concrete. Remember, he is building his brain from each experience.
3) Talk with your child. Model correct and complete language. Use pronouns correctly; refer to yourself in the first person (e.g., “I’ll do it,” instead of “Mommy do it”).
4) Respect the time it takes for him to live in the moment and enjoy the sites and sounds around him. Children have their own rhythm of life that is different than an adult’s rhythm.
5) Be ready and willing to repeat. Children depend on repetition to learn things. Through repetition he builds his ability to concentrate and his understanding of the world. When he repeats, he can remember the new concept.