The Montessori approach was developed without prejudice to help the child on his journey to adulthood. Maria Montessori through observing children in various cultures and countries found that there are four basic developmental levels in the journey to adulthood:
- infancy, from zero to six years old – the “furniture children”.
The goal of this stage of development is adaptation and personality formation.
Maria Montessori mentions: the child, in the first stage of his development, sets the warp for weaving, i.e. all the successes he has achieved on his material environment.
- of childhood, from six to twelve years old – the “children of peace and rudeness”.
The goal of this second stage of development is acquiring the civilization of the world.
The three characteristics of the child of this age period are: the need the child feels to escape from the narrow framework of the family environment, the passage of the mind into the area of the abstract and the birth of the feeling of morality and justice.
- adolescence, from twelve to eighteen years old – the “children of the Earth”.
Aim of this third stage, is the creation of the social Ego – the creation of the adult. In other words, it is a social newborn.
- of the age of maturity, from eighteen to twenty-four years old – the “children of the desert” and the “children of the universe”, and this fourth stage he characterized as the stage of joy.
The goal of this stage is creativity and contribution.
The full development of the adult person presupposes that the special needs of each of these periods have been met. Each stage of development prepares the child for the next stage that follows and is completely distinct, both in its physical and psychological characteristics. Because of this differentiation, the child at each stage must be treated almost as a separate being.