Dr. Montessori defined an Absorbent Mind when a “child is effortless assimilating the sensorial stimuli of the environment”
One analogy for this concept: a sponge soaking in everything within the environment. Another analogy: a camera snapping images of everything it sees through the lens.
“The ‘absorbent mind‘ welcomes everything, puts its hope in everything, accepts poverty equally with wealth, adopts any religion and the prejudices and habits of its countrymen, incarnating all in itself. This is the child!”– The Absorbent Mind {pg. 292}
What is the Absorbent Mind
According to the American Montessori Society, the Absorbent Mind is: “From birth through approximately age 6, the young child experiences a period of intense mental activity that allows her to “absorb” learning from her environment without conscious effort, naturally and spontaneously.”
A child is born without the ability to speak or to take care of himself but within the first three years of his life through the use of his senses he gathers the information he needs to develop, to “create and construct” himself. He gathers naturally without thinking.
The Absorbent Mind & Sensitive Periods
“Impressions do not merely enter his mind, they form it, they incarnate themselves in him.” – The Absorbent Mind
Montessori broke the Absorbent Mind down into two phases: 1) the unconscious (from 0-3 years old) and 2) the conscious (from 3-6 years old).
Unconscious & Conscious Phases
During the 0-3 year period, the child unknowingly gathers impressions from his environment, begins to develop the “self-concept” and life skills, such as independence.
Once he enters the latter period of development, the child is consciously taking in his environment, not with new impressions but seeking ways to give order to, or to create a system for, those impressions gathered unconsciously during the prior period of development.
Movement and liberty are big inner drivers at this time. This is the “let me do it by myself” stage and us adults should allow that to happen. The Absorbent Mind fades as he reaches six years of age.
Montessori's Sensitive Periods
Within that concept of the Absorbent Mind, she defined Sensitive Periods of Development.
“Sensitive periods describe the pattern the child follows in gaining knowledge of his environment while Absorbent Mind explains the quality and process by which he gathers this knowledge.” {Montessori: A Modern Approach, pg. 36)
Sensitive periods are “blocks of time in a child’s life when he is absorbed with one characteristic of his environment to the exclusion of all others”.
E.M. Standing writes, “Montessori observed sensitive periods in the child’s need for order in the environment, the use of the hand and tongue, the development of walking, a fascination with minute details objects, and a time of intense social interest.”
Montessori’s background in biology lends to very effective analogies to these periods in a child’s life. A young butterfly lays eggs on a leaf, where tiny caterpillars hatch and with a keen sensitivity to light seek out the softest leaves to nourish themselves in dangerous spots on plants. Once the caterpillars grow and are strong enough to eat tougher leaves, this sensitivity to light disappears. Another analogy is a searchlight (coming from the mind) illuminating only certain parts of the environment.
Like creatures in science, the child will show an intense interest in a certain activity and be driven to repeat the activity again and again for no reason but to satisfy an inner urge to make contact with and then to make sense of his world.
The dire aspect of this point lies in the belief that once a child leaves a sensitive period, the opportunity for a “natural consequence” is lost and further development will be impeded. {Montessori: A Modern Approach, pg. 25 & 32)
So, as soon as adults witness a child entering a certain sensitive period, the adult must do all possible within his power to cater to the child’s development.
Thanks for reading.
Marnie
from Amazon. So they are not from an “authentic” Montessori company but I am really impressed with them.
, this really cool 
and several books including 
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. I am excited for this material because it is so versatile. We worked on gross motor and eye hand coordination by tossing into a vase. I also drew shapes on the floor with painter's tape and we took turns tossing the bags into various shapes. This learning is a lot of fun and involves movement. So, I love it.
