The Montessori method is a child-centered, educational method based on the child development theories originated by Italian educator Maria Montessori in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Primarily applied in preschool and elementary school settings, its method of education is characterized by emphasizing self-directed activity, on the part of the child, and clinical observation, on the part of the teacher. From the moment the child enters the classroom, each step in his education is seen as a progressive building block, ultimately forming the whole person.

 Montessori schools pride themselves on seeing and meeting the student’s personality and intellectual needs, rather than viewing them as part of a classroom process. The students are encouraged to teach and to help each other.

The premises of a Montessori approach to teaching and learning include the following: 

• That children are capable of self-directed learning.
• That it is critically important for the teacher to be an "observer" of the child instead of a lecturer.
• That there are numerous "sensitive periods" of development (periods of a few weeks or even months), during which a child's mind is particularly open to learning specific skills or knowledge such as crawling, sitting, walking, talking, reading, counting, and various levels of social interaction. These skills are learned effortlessly and joyfully.
• That children have an "absorbent mind" from birth to around age 6, possessing limitless motivation to achieve competence within their environment and to perfect skills and understandings. This phenomenon is characterized by the young child's capacity for repetition of activities within sensitive period categories, such as exhaustive babbling as language practice leading to language competence.
• That children are masters of their school room environment, which has been specifically prepared for them to be academic, comfortable, and to encourage independence by giving them the tools and responsibility to manage its upkeep.
• That children learn through discovery, so didactic (self-correcting) materials with a control for error are used. Through the use of these materials, which are specific to Montessori schools (sets of letters, blocks and science experiments) children learn to correct their own mistakes instead of relying on a teacher to give them the correct answer.
• That children most often learn alone during periods of intense concentration. During these self-chosen and spontaneous periods, the child is not to be interrupted by the teacher.
• That the hand is intimately connected to the developing brain in children. Children must actually touch the shapes, letters, temperatures, etc. that they are learning about—not just watch a teacher or TV screen tell them about these discoveries.

Montessori classrooms provide an atmosphere that allows children to learn at their own pace and interact with others in a natural and peaceful environment.

Practical Life
This area is designed to help students develop a care for themselves, the environment, and each other. In the Primary years (ages 3–6), children learn how to do things such as: pouring and scooping, using kitchen utensils, washing dishes, polishing objects, scrubbing tables, and cleaning-up. They also learn how to dress themselves, tie their shoes, wash their hands, and other self-care practices. They learn these practical skills through a wide variety of materials and activities.

The practical life area teaches language in many forms. Fine motor skills used in the pencil-grip help the child develop that particular grip, in order to later more easily use a pencil.

Sensory
All learning first comes through the senses. By isolating something that is being taught, the child can more easily focus on it. There are many different Montessori sensorial materials designed to help the child refine the tactile, visual, auditory, olfactory, and gustatory senses. Exact phrasing of identifying terms is important, thus, an oval is not an “egg shape”, a sphere is not a “ball”. The Montessori method greatly emphasizes using the correct terminology for naming what we see. This is readily apparent in the sensorial area, because, it regularly overlaps into the mathematics area.

Geography
This includes studies of the world and other cultures. Montessori children achieve early understanding of the concepts of continent, country, and state, and the names of many countries of the world. Montessori method schooling implements include colored maps and flags, to assist the children in remembering continents, countries, and states.

Science
The science curriculum takes advantage of the child’s natural questioning and draws a curriculum for the 3–6 age range. Early-childhood age children are very detail-oriented. They know what a bird is. At that age, they want to know the body parts of a bird. They want to know the life cycles of different animals. They begin to observe the parts of a plant, and ask: What are those long things coming out the middle of a flower?

Language
The language curriculum, especially in the early years, includes everything — from vocabulary development to writing to reading. Children learn basic letter-sounds through the use of sandpaper letters; the letters are cut from sandpaper and glued to a colored wooden board. The child’s tracing the letter implements tactile learning of how the letter feels. The children can also feel if a mistake was made, because of the different texture of the sandpaper from the wooden board. The colors represent the types of the letters such as blue for a vowel. They begin constructing words with a moveable alphabet of wood or plastic letters, before they can actually read words.

Mathematics
Children go from a concrete understanding of mathematics to an abstract understanding of mathematics via mathematical concepts. For example, telling the difference between 1, 10, 100, and 1000, because they have felt it many times. Originally, they felt it in the pink tower, when they were three-year-olds, and, later, in the mathematics materials. The concepts of squares and cubes become concrete in their use of the Montessori Bead Cabinet.